Abstract
Knowledge of diverse sexual motivations can have profound implications for our comprehension of the causes, correlations, and consequences of sexual behavior. This study had two objectives: on the one hand, to determine the different motives why young Spanish university students have sex and their relationship with different sociodemographic and psychosexual variables and sexual behavior; on the other hand, to review and improve the psychometric properties of the Sexual Motivations Scale and validate it in Spanish. Participants were 805 university students of both sexes (78% women, 74% heterosexuals), aged between 18 and 26 years (Mage = 20.88), who completed a battery of online questionnaires. Significant associations were found between young people's sexual motives, especially the motives of coping, peer pressure, and enhancement, the sociodemographic variables (sex, age sexual orientation, relational status), sexual behavior (age of initiation), and psychosexual variables (sociosexuality, self-esteem as a sexual partner, satisfaction with sex life). Also, a new structure of the Sexual Motivations Scale was proposed, with the elimination of the factor of Self-Affirmation. The discussion highlights the relevance of the results obtained due to their implications in the promotion of sexual health, in addition to achieving the first instrument validated in Spanish for the evaluation of sexual motivations.
Highlights
Until a few decades ago, the main reason admitted for having sex was reproduction (Meston and Buss, 2007)
Internal Structure of the Sexual Motivations Scale (SMS) We started by testing a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) model for the SMS items
As for the instrument used, the Spanish validation of the SMS was performed, which implies the first validation of this scale in a language other than English and outside the United States
Summary
Until a few decades ago, the main reason admitted for having sex was reproduction (Meston and Buss, 2007). Three perspectives have been used for the development of sexual motive questionnaires. As Hill and Preston (1996) noted 25 years ago, “many instruments have apparently been developed ad hoc for each study, with little attention to the reliability and validity of the measures” A short form of this scale has been presented (Meston et al, 2020) some dimensions showed a rather low reliability (minimum Cronbach’s α = 0.42), and the model fit of factor analysis was below the commonly used cut-off points (e.g., TLI = 0.86)
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