A multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement assessment for sexual partners: Purchase task validation

The current study developed and tested a multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement ( MSWO ) assessment for potential sexual partners for use in research on human immunodeficiency virus. College students ( N = 41) first completed an MSWO assessment and then completed a hypothetical purchase task for encounters with partners identified by the MSWO as high, median, and low preference. Overall, hypothetical purchase task responding was consistent with that from the MSWO , in that the highest valuation was observed for the high‐preference partner and the lowest for the low‐preference partner. Potentially interesting individual differences in purchase task responding, however, were obtained; some subjects showed differentiated responding among the 3 preference levels ( n = 15), whereas others similarly valued high‐ and median‐preference partners ( n = 5), and others similarly valued low‐ and median‐preference partners ( n = 18).