Worry About Sexual Outcomes (Sales et al., 2009)

• Populations: Adolescents
• Age ranges: 14-18
• Languages: English
• Countries: United States

Items

Item Stem:

In the past 6 months, how often did you worry that...

• . . . you might get the HIV virus. 
• . . . you might already have the HIV virus. 
• . . . your sex partner may be infected with the HIV virus. 
• . . . your partner may become infected with the HIV virus. 
• . . . you might get an STI. 
• . . . you might already have an STI. 
• . . . your partner may be infected with an STI. 
• . . . your partner may become infected with an STI. 
• . . . you might get pregnant. 
• . . . you might already be pregnant. 

Responses

Items used a 4 item ordinal scale: Never, Sometimes, Often, Always

Scoring

 All items were coded so that higher values indicated more frequent worrying about these health outcomes

“All items are coded so that higher values indicate more frequent worrying about these health outcomes. Scores can be calculated in two ways: (a) items are summed to create a total scale score for the full 10 items, or (b) items are summed to create two subscale scores: STI/HIV Worry(Items 1 to 8) and Pregnancy Worry (Items 9 and 10). Scores on the total scale range from 10 to 40. Scores on the STI/HIV Worry subscale range from 8 to 32. Scores on the Pregnancy Worry subscale range from 2 to 8.The mean score for participants in our validation sample for the total scale was 16.81 (SD = 6.43). Participants in the validation sample had a mean score of 15.52 (SD = 5.96) for the STI/HIV Worry subscale and a mean score of 4.43 (SD =2.03) for the Pregnancy Worry subscale (Sales et al., 2008).” (Sales et al., 2020)

Citations

• Sales, J. M., Spitalnick, J., Milhausen, R. R., Wingood, G. M., DiClemente, R. J., Salazar, L. F., & Crosby, R. A. (2009). Validation of the worry about sexual outcomes scale for use in STI/HIV prevention interventions for adolescent females. Health Education Research, 24(1), 140-152. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyn006
• Sales, J. M., Milhausen, R. R., Spitalnick, J., Diclemente, R. J.(2020). Worry About Sexual Outcomes Scale. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (106-108). Routledge.