Test of Sexual Attitudes (Hudson, Murph, & Nurius, 1983)

• Populations: middle and late adolescents
• Age ranges: 16-18
• Languages: English, Spanish
• Countries: Spain; United States

Items

• I think there is too much sexual freedom given to adults these days 
• I think that the increased sexual freedom seen in the past several years has done much to undermine the American family 
• I think that young people have been given too much information about sex 
• Sex education should be restricted to the home 
• Older people do not need to have sex 
• Sex education should be given only when people are ready for marriage 
• Premarital sex may be a sign of a decaying social order 
• Extramarital sex is never excusable 
• I think there is too much sexual freedom given to teenagers these days 
• I think there is not enough sexual restraint among young people 
• I think people indulge in sex too much 
• I think the only proper way to have sex is through intercourse 
• I think sex should be reserved for marriage 
• Sex should be only for the young 
• Too much social approval has been given to homosexuals 
• Sex should be devoted to the business of procreation 
• People should not masturbate 
• Heavy sexual petting should be discouraged 
• People should not discuss their sexual affairs or business with others 
• Severely handicapped (physically and mentally) people should not have sex 
• There should be no laws prohibiting sexual acts between consenting adults 
• What two consenting adults do together sexually is their own business 
• There is too much sex on television 
• Movies today are too sexually explicit 
• Pornography should be totally banned from our bookstores 

(Hudson, Murph, & Nurius, 1983)

Responses

Items used a 5 point Likert-type response scale:

• 1 Strongly disagree
• 2 Disagree
• 3 Neither agree nor disagree
• 4 Agree
• 5 Strongly agree
  

Scoring

“all but two items are worded and scored so that a higher score represents a more conservative orientation. Items 21 and 22 are worded and scored so that a higher score represents a more liberal attitude concerning sexual expression... 

 The total SAS score is then computed as S = (ΣX-7V)(100)/([N][4])

where X is an individual item score, and AT is the total number of items that are properly completed. Items that are left blank or scored outside the range from 1 to 5 are given a score of 0.” (Hudson, Murph, & Nurius, 1983)

Citations

• Walter W. Hudson, Gerald J. Murphy & Paula S. Nurius (1983) A short‐form scale to measure liberal vs. conservative orientations toward human sexual expression, Journal of Sex Research, 19:3, 258-272, DOI: 10.1080/00224498309551186
• Sáez Uribarri, Í., & Guijarro Santamaría, C. (2000). Actitudes y experiencia sexual en mujeres jóvenes = Attitudes and sexual experience in young women. Revista Iberoamericana de Diagnóstico y Evaluación Psicologica, 9(1), 73–90. psyh.

Team comments

This scale was originally validated in an adult population by Hudson, Hudson, Murph, & Nurius.  Therefore, age and validation data presented here are only taken from the work of Uribarri and Santamaría (2000).