The concept of sexual desire is not easy to define, and even less to assess. However, a significa... more The concept of sexual desire is not easy to define, and even less to assess. However, a significant number of women suffer from a decrease in libido, thus constituting one of the main complaints received in sexological consultation. Consequence of the difficulty of conceptuali-zation, many questionnaires are available to clinicians. Therefore, it is not easy to determine how to choose the assessment of desire. The aim of this paper is to develop four questionnaires translated in French and implemented to assess the severity of the symptoms of the disorder of sexual desire, the level of desire or psychological reactions that are consecutive. The psy-chometric properties, the forces as well as the limits of 4 scales will be presented: the Scale of Sexual Desire (Tremblay and Roussy, 2000), Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory (Derogatis and Meliseratos, 1979), the sexual history of the multiaxial system of sexual dysfunction (Scho-ver et al., 1982) and the Female Sexual Function Index (Meston, 2003). This brief analysis leads to the conclusion that the Female Sexual Function Index seems to be a relevant measurement tool for the overall evaluation of the female sexual function. With regard to the specific dimension of sexual desire, the scale of sexual desire seems to provide the most satisfactory measure. However, it also appears that the francophone questionnaire currently being developed for the assessment of sexual desire in women suffer from a lack of empirical validation. This research area offers many future prospects.
Uploads
Papers by P. De Sutter