Open AccessDevelopment and Psychometric Evaluation of the PrEP Sexual Expectancies (PSEXS) Scale
Author(s) -
Alex Dubov,
Adedotun Ogunbajo,
Frederick L. Altice,
Liana Fraenkel,
Brian Distelberg
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
aids and behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.994
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1573-3254
pISSN - 1090-7165
DOI - 10.1007/s10461-020-03087-7
Subject(s) - psychology , health psychology , expectancy theory , confirmatory factor analysis , scale (ratio) , men who have sex with men , clinical psychology , anal sex , developmental psychology , social psychology , public health , structural equation modeling , medicine , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , statistics , physics , nursing , mathematics , syphilis , family medicine , quantum mechanics
The goal of this study was to develop and evaluate psychometric properties of the PrEP Sexual Expectancies Scale (PSEXS). The PSEXS represents a range of expectations for how PrEP use will affect one's sexual experience. The scale was developed to understand perceived reinforcements of PrEP use among men who have sex with men (MSM), including sexual risk-taking. The study builds upon Expectancy Theory to develop a measure of sex-related PrEP expectancies with a representative sample of 1155 MSM participants from Ukraine and 408 MSM participants from the U.S. Expectancy items represented two domains: increased sexual risk-taking and enhancement of sexual experience. Confirmatory analyses showed that a two-factor model provided a good fit to the data. The PSEXS scale had a high internal reliability in both samples (Ukraine α = 0.88, U.S. α = 0.83), and the identified factor structure explains a large amount of variance in both samples. Recent studies suggest that expectations of intimacy and better sexual experience can be a significant deciding factor for PrEP uptake. The PSEXS provides researchers with a useful measure for examining MSM's expectancy beliefs about the impact of PrEP use on their sexual life.