Development and validation of a measure of sexual motivation
Internally funded project
Start date : 01.10.2017
Project details
Scientific Abstract
The main goal of this project is the development and validation of a set of measures for the assessment of sexual motivation. The measurement approach employed is rooted in incentive-theory accounts of sexual motivation that emphasize the potency of sexual incentives for activating a central motive state aimed at obtaining sexual satisfaction. It is based on a concept of validity that requires evidence for a causal effect of an attribute on its measure and successful applications of this principle in motivation science based on the analysis of imaginative picture stories. The specific objectives of the project are: (1) Development of picture-story measures of the need for sex (nSex) based on content-coding and automated text analysis; (2) development of a suitable picture set for eliciting stories; (3) determination of the reliability (inter-coder, retest, picture/response profile) of the nSex measures; (4) testing the predictive validity of the nSex measures for core phenomena of motivation (attention, affect, psychophysiology and hormones, associative learning, instrumental learning/behavior, frequency of sexual activity in daily life and its association with emotional well-being); (5) examining its convergent and discriminant validity.
