Changes in Sexual Functioning Questionnaire, Short Form (Clayton, McGarvey, & Clavet, 1997)

• Languages: English, Spanish
• Countries: United States

Items

Subscales:

• Pleasure, 1 item
• Desire/frequency, 2 items
• Desire/interest, 3 items
• Arousal/erection, 3 items
• Orgasm/ejaculation, 3 items

Short Form Items by subscale and sex versions:

Female Version

Pleasure:

• Compared with the most enjoyable it has ever been, how enjoyable or pleasurable is your sex life right now?

Desire/frequency:

• How frequently do you engage in sexual activity (sexual intercourse, masturbation, etc.) now?
• How often do you desire to engage in sexual activity?

Desire/interest:

• How frequently do you engage in sexual thoughts (thinking about sex, sexual fantasies) now?
• Do you enjoy books, movies, music or artwork with sexual content?
• How much pleasure or enjoyment do you get from thinking about and fantasizing about sex?

Arousal/erection:

• How often do you become sexually aroused?
• Are you easily aroused?
• Do you have adequate vaginal lubrication during sexual activity (get wet)?

Orgasm/ejaculation:

• How often do you experience an orgasm
• Are you able to have an orgasm when you want to?
• How much pleasure or enjoyment do you get from your orgasms?

Male Version

Pleasure:

• Compared with the most enjoyable it has ever been, how enjoyable or pleasurable is your sex life right now?

Desire/frequency:

• How frequently do you engage in sexual activity (sexual intercourse, masturbation, etc.) now?
• How often do you desire to engage in sexual activity?

Desire/interest:

• How frequently do you engage in sexual thoughts (thinking about sex, sexual fantasies) now?
• Do you enjoy books, movies, music or artwork with sexual content?
• How much pleasure or enjoyment do you get from thinking about and fantasizing about sex?

Arousal/erection:

• How often do you have an erection related or unrelated to sexual activity?
• Do you get an erection easily?
• Are you able to maintain an erection?

Orgasm/ejaculation:

• How often do you have an ejaculation?
• Are you able to ejaculate when you want to?
• How much pleasure or enjoyment do you get from your orgasms?

Items as reported by Keller and colleagues (2006)

Scoring

“The CSFQ-I scoring booklet may be obtained from the first author.
To score items on the CSFQ-14, take the numerical value or weight indicated for a particular response. For example, in Item 1, a response of “some enjoyment or pleasure” has a numerical value of 3, whereas a response of “much enjoyment or pleasure” has a numerical value of 4. Two items (Item 10 and Item 14) have responses that are reverse scored: for example, on Item 14 in the CSFQ14-F version, a response of “never” has a numerical value of 5, whereas a response of “every day” has a value of 1. A CSFQ-14 total score for both female and male versions is obtained by summing the value of Items 1 to 14. Scores ≤ 41 for females and ≤ 47 for males indicate sexual 
dysfunction. To calculate subscale scores, add up the values for only the items that correspond to a particular subscale: Pleasure (Item 1); Desire/Frequency (Item 2 + Item 3); Desire/Interest (Item 4 + Item 5 + Item 6); Arousal/Excitement (Item 7 + Item 8 + Item 9); Orgasm/
Completion (Item 11 + Item 12 + Item 13). Five subscale scores with established thresholds indicating sexual dysfunction were derived from non-overlap of the confidence intervals around the means for individuals with sexual dysfunction vs. normal controls: Pleasure (scores ≤ 4); Desire/Frequency (summed scores ≤ 6 for women and ≤ 8 for men); Desire/Interest (summed scores ≤ 9 for women and ≤ 11 for men); Arousal/Excitement (summed scores ≤ 12 for females and ≤ 13 for males); and Orgasm/Completion (summed scores ≤ 11 for females and ≤ 13 for males). Items 10 and 14 are included in the total score, but do not map to a subscale dimension”  (Clayton, 2020)

Citations

• Clayton, A. H., McGarvey, E. L., & Clavet, G. J. (1997). The Changes in Sexual Functioning Questionnaire (CSFQ): Development, reliability, and validity. Psychopharmacology Bulletin, 33, 731–745
• Keller, A., McGarvey, E. L., & Clayton, A. H. (2006). Reliability and construct validity of the Changes in Sexual Functioning 
  Questionnaire Short-Form (CSFQ-14). Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 32, 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00926230500232909
• Garcia-Portilla, M. P., Saiz, P. A., Fonseca, E., Al-Halabi, S., Bobes-Bascaran, M. T., Arrojo, M., . . . Bobes, J. (2011). Psychometric 
  properties of the Spanish version of the Changes in Sexual Functioning Questionnaire Short Form (CSFQ-14) in patients with 
  severe mental disorders. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 8, 1371–1382. 
  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.02043.x
• Clayton, A. H. (2020). Changes in Sexual Functioning Questionnaire. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (593-596). Routledge.

Team comments

This measure has been validated in over 75 different languages!  While we’ve listed those we found, we invite you to submit any translation papers you know of to our measure finder so we can add the language details to this measure listing, as with all of our measures.