Metacognitions about Sex Scale (Efrati & Spada, 2024)
- Populations: Middle and Late adolescents
- Age ranges: 13-18
- Languages: Hebrew, English
- Countries: Israel
Items
Subscales:
- Negative Metacognitions about Sex, 7 Items
- Positive Metacognitions about Sex, 4 Items
Items by Subscale:
Negative Metacognitions about Sex:
- Thoughts about sex interfere with my functioning
- Thoughts about sex are becoming an obsession
- Sexual thoughts make me lose control
- Once I start thinking of sex, I cannot stop
- I have no control over my sexual behavior
- Having thoughts about sex means I will act on them
- I have no control over my thoughts about sex
Positive Metacognitions about Sex:
- Engaging in sex distracts my mind from problems
- Engaging in sex reduces my feelings of tension
- Engaging in sex reduces my anxious feelings
- Engaging in sex will help me to control my negative thoughts
Responses:
Items used a 4 point Likert-type scale, 1 = Do not agree, 4 = Agree very much
Scoring
“Items were summed to obtain scores for both positive and negative metacognitions, with higher scores representing higher levels of metacognitions.” (Efrati & Spada, 2024)
Citations
Yaniv Efrati & Marcantonio M. Spada (2024) Development and Validation of the Metacognitions about Sex Scale: Exploring its Role as a Mediator between Negative Affect, Emotion Dysregulation Strategies, and Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 50:1, 76-93, DOI: 10.1080/0092623X.2023.2259894
Scoring breakdown
Measure development
- Significant design input from young people
- Cognitive interviews with young people
- Expert input
Validity
- Green: Face validity
- Green: Convergent validity
- Green: Construct validity
Reliability
- Green: Internal consistency
- Unknown: Test-retest
Ease of use
- Unknown: Readability
Definitions
Face validity: How well a measure appears to represent the construct it is supposed to be measuring.
Convergent validity: How well a measure correlates with other hypothetically-related measures.
Construct validity: The extent to which a measure reflects the construct it was designed to evaluate.
Internal consistency: The extent to which items in a scale capture aspects of the same construct.
Test-retest: The degree to which measurement scores are consistent over a short period of time (usually 2 weeks).
Readability: The ease with which a reader can understand the questionnaire items.
Key
- Green: Meets validation criteria
- Red: Does not meet validation criteria
- Unknown: Evidence not available
