The Wyatt Sex History Questionnaire

Abstract

The complexities of developing appropriate formats for obtaining sexual histories that include women's consensual and coercive sexual experiences are discussed in this paper. The Wyatt Sex History Questionnaire (WSHQ), used with a multi-ethnic sample of women, is described to obtain incidents of non-consensual sexual abuse. The advantages of using a face-to-face format to obtain incidents of child sexual victimization are highlighted. In order to assess a range of effects of women's consensual sexual functioning, items of the WSHQ, administered in telephone and face-to-face interviews, through self report measures and indirect questioning using randomized responses, were compared for their effectiveness in obtaining consensual sexual experiences. The advantages of using face-to-face interview techniques with multi-ethnic community sample to assess the affects of non-consensual sexual experiences in childhood on women's consensual sexual practices is discussed.