Measuring Women’s Satisfaction with Treatment for Sexual Dysfunction: Development and Initial Validation of the Women’s Inventory of Treatment Satisfaction (WITS-9)

Abstract

Aim To develop a brief, psychometrically sound, measure of satisfaction with treatment for female sexual arousal disorder. Method In Phase 1, women in focus groups generated items measuring satisfaction with treatment for arousal disorder. In Phase 2, expert clinicians/researchers and women with self-reported female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) assessed the content validity of the items. In Phase 3, women enrolled in a double-blind treatment trial for female sexual dysfunction completed the Women’s Inventory of Treatment Satisfaction (WITS) and the Female Sexual Function Inventory (FSFI) to provide reliability and validity information. Main Outcome Measures WITS and FSFI. Results In Phase 2, 36 items demonstrated adequate content validity. In Phase 3, 20 items correlated with symptom improvement on the FSFI arousal subscale. Factor analysis sorted these items into three dimensions: initiation/receptivity satisfaction, treatment satisfaction, and perceived partner satisfaction. The three items with the highest loadings on each factor formed the WITS-9. Internal consistency (α) reliability coefficients for the total WITS-9 score and the three subscale scores were 0.92, 0.93, 0.92, and 0.79, respectively. Correlations of WITS-9 scores with the FSFI change scores for subgroups with different sexual dysfunctions offer construct validity support that the WITS-9 measures treatment satisfaction for women with a variety of sexual dysfunctions. Conclusions The WITS-9 is a brief, psychometrically sound scale that is useful for assessing treatment satisfaction in women with sexual dysfunctions. While the WITS-9 is promising, further work needs to be done to obtain reliability and validity information in additional samples.

Recalculation of the Critical Values for Lawshe’s Content Validity Ratio

“…Prevention and health promotion specialists have used Lawshe’s CVR to develop scales for assessing child-rearing knowledge and practices for women with epilepsy (Saramma & Thomas, 2010), a belief-based physical activity questionnaire for diabetic patients (Ghazanfari, Niknami, Ghofranipour, Hajizadeh, & Montazeri, 2010), a checklist for performing content analysis on patient education course syllabi (Gail-Hinckley Heitzer, McKenzie, Amschler, & Bock, 2009), and for assessing whether generic quality of life scales were free of content related to physical function (Hall, Krahn, Horner-Johnson, & Lamb, 2011). In the field of mental health and rehabilitation, researchers developed scales for assessing feelings of competence among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Hanc & Brzezinska, 2009), satisfaction with treatment for sexual dysfunction (Corty, Althof, & Wieder, 2011), and psychotherapist counter-transference (Hayes, 2004) using CVR methodology to assess content validity. In a novel study, cross-cultural researchers used the CVR to determine the cultural relevance of items drawn from the Indiana Job Satisfaction Scale (IJSS) thereby producing a Chinese version of the IJSS for use in vocational rehabilitation programs for individuals with mental retardation in China (Tsang & Wong, 2005).…”

The history of sexual medicine.

“…11 Later, psychologists Stan Althof, Len Derogatis, Julia Heiman, Cindy Meston, Michael Perelman, David Rowland, and others joined Rosen in consulting to Pharma on creation of numerous endpoint instruments, including but not limited to the Changes in Sexual Functioning Questionnaire(Clayton et al, 1997), Decreased Sexual Desire Screener(Clayton et al, 2009), Derogatis Interview for Sexual Functioning-Self Report(Derogatis, 1997), Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory(Derogatis, 1975), Erectile Dysfunction Inventory of Treatment Satisfaction(Althof et al, 1999), Female Sexual Distress Scale(Derogatis et al, 2002), Index of Premature Ejaculation(Althof, Rosen, et al, 2006), Male Sexual Health Questionnaire (R. C Rosen, Catania, et al, 2004),. Premature Ejaculation Diagnostic Tool(Symonds et al, 2007), Profile of Female Sexual Function(Derogatis et al, 2004), Psychological and Interpersonal Relationship Scales(Swindle et al, 2004), Sexual Interest and Desire Inventory-Female(Sills et al, 2005), Subjective Sexual Arousal Scale for Men, and Women's Inventory of Treatment Satisfaction(Corty, Althof, & Wieder, 2010). Copyright American Psychological Association.…”

Sexual dysfunctions.

“…Although objective treatment outcome and treatment satisfaction are generally correlated, the association is not as large as one might expect. In Corty et al' s (2011) validation study of a scale of women' s satisfaction with sexual dysfunction treatment, objective outcome predicted only 20% of the variability in treatment satisfaction for women with subjective arousal complaints, 14% in women with orgasm complaints, and 8% in women with desire diffi culties. So, what about the unexplained 80% to 92% of the variability in treatment satisfaction?…”