Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure

Abstract

The Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure (C-Coping Measure), developed by Berdychevsky in 2023, is a specialized 59-item psychological assessment designed to evaluate the range of coping strategies individuals employed to manage the restrictive and stressful effects of the pandemic on their intimate and sexual lives. The instrument’s development relied on a thorough literature review, notably incorporating insights from scales like the comprehensive sexual motivations measure by Meston et al. (2020), ensuring a theoretically grounded approach to item generation.

The measure underwent rigorous pretesting, refinement, and expert analysis to establish robust content validity. The final structure comprises fifty-nine items organized across nine distinct domains, such as relational communication, goal-setting, and risk management, all focused on capturing the perceived usefulness of various coping strategies. Validation was conducted using a sample of adults primarily located in the United States and the United Kingdom. Psychometric evaluation included an Exploratory Factor Analysis that successfully supported the nine-factor model, alongside strong evidence of internal consistency across all subscales.

Keywords

Caution and Logistical, Coping Strategies, COVID-19 Pandemic, Creativity and Innovation, Diversion, Educational, Goal-Setting, Online and Technology, Relational, Risk and Experimentation, Sex Life, Sexual Coping, Substances and Context-Related, Psychosexual Behavior, Stress and Coping Measures, Close Relationships.

Authors

Berdychevsky, Liza

Purpose

The primary purpose of this measure is to systematically assess the specific behavioral, cognitive, and relational coping strategies that individuals utilized to mitigate the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health measures (such as lockdowns and social distancing) on their sexual relationships and personal sex lives.

The instrument provides a detailed profile of these coping mechanisms, allowing researchers to differentiate between various adaptive and potentially problematic strategies, and to determine which behaviors were perceived as most effective or useful by the respondents during the crisis period.

Construct

The core construct is **Sexual Coping Mechanisms** in response to acute, widespread environmental stress (the COVID-19 crisis). This construct is defined as the intentional efforts, both conscious and unconscious, made by an individual to manage demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding their resources regarding their sexual life.

The measure operationalizes this construct through nine empirically derived dimensions, capturing the complexity of sexual adjustment during crisis. These dimensions span proactive planning (Goal-Setting), safety considerations (Caution and Logistical), relationship maintenance (Relational), and seeking alternative modes of sexual expression (Online and Technology).

Validity

The validity evidence presented focuses primarily on the initial development phase. **Content Validity** was established through a thorough literature review during item creation, followed by rigorous pretesting, refinement of wording, and subsequent validation via expert analysis to ensure the scale items adequately covered the domain of sexual coping during the pandemic.

No specific statistical indicators for structural validity (e.g., Confirmatory Factor Analysis) or criterion validity (e.g., correlations with external measures of sexual satisfaction or distress) were detailed in the initial reports.

Reliability

The C-Coping Measure demonstrates excellent internal consistency, confirming the reliability of its subscales. Internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across the nine factors.

The alpha coefficients exhibited a strong range, starting at 0.86 for the Educational strategies subscale, and reaching a maximum reliability coefficient of 0.96 for both the Risk and Experimentation strategies and the Relational strategies subscales. These high values suggest that the items within each factor are highly correlated and measure their respective latent constructs consistently.

Factor Analysis

An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was utilized to uncover the underlying dimensionality of the 59 items. The analysis employed oblique rotation, which is appropriate when factors are expected to be correlated, as is often the case with various coping strategies.

The EFA procedure successfully extracted nine distinct factors, which collectively accounted for 74.9% of the total variance in the measure. This result provides strong empirical evidence supporting the proposed nine-factor structure of the Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure.

Instrument

Test Type: Original

Format: The format involves a two-step process for each item. First, participants respond to 59 nominal, dichotomous variables (yes/no) indicating whether they actually utilized the coping strategy during the pandemic. Second, if they responded ‘yes,’ they were asked to rate the degree of usefulness of that strategy on a 5-point Likert scale, anchored by 1 (“extremely useless”) and 5 (“extremely useful”).

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male and Female respondents)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years & older), including Young Adulthood (18-29 years), Thirties (30-39 years), Middle Age (40-64 years), and Aged (65 years & older)

Population Details:

• Location: United States; United Kingdom

• Respondents: Adults aged 18 to 75 years

• Sexual Orientations Reported: Heterosexual; Bisexual; Gay/Lesbian

Test Methodology: Test Reliability; Internal Consistency; Factor Analysis; Exploratory Factor Analysis

Factors and Subscales:

• Goal-setting

• Risk and experimentation

• Relational

• Caution and logistical

• Creativity and innovation

• Substances and context-related

• Online and technology

• Diversion

• Educational

Keywords

Caution and Logistical, Coping Behavior, COVID-19 Impact, Creativity, Diversion, Educational Strategies, Goal Setting, Online and Technology, Pandemics, Relational Coping, Sexual Risk Taking, Strategies, Stress and Coping Measures, Cybersex.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9392-4979

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Berdychevsky, Liza: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Applied Health Sciences, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, 219 Huff Hall, 1206 South Fourth St., Champaign, Illinois, United States, 61820, [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact Corresponding Author

Commercial: No

Fee: No

Test Year: 2023

Reference’s

Berdychevsky, L. (2023). (Un)forgotten sex lives during the COVID-19 pandemic: Coping strategies that work and the role of experience. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(8), 3343–3363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02630-6

Items of the Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

No data is Available