Attitudes Toward Unconventional Sex Scale

Abstract

The Attitudes Toward Unconventional Sex Scale (ATUSS) is a concise 5-item instrument designed to assess an individual’s general disposition toward and preference for engaging in unconventional sexual practices. This measure specifically targets the enjoyment of sexual behaviors that deviate from traditional or conventional sexual practices. Items are scored using a 7-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree), allowing researchers to quantify general attitudes without confounding them with reports of specific behaviors.

Keywords

ATUSS, Attitudes Toward Unconventional Sex Scale, unconventional sex, sexual preferences, sexual attitudes, Likert scale, predictive validity, internal consistency.

Authors

CAROLYN A. WENNER, V. MICHELLE RUSSELL, JAMES K. MCNULTY.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the ATUSS is to provide a clean measure of an individual’s general disposition toward unconventional sexual activity. Unlike previous measures that often conflated general tendencies with the reporting of specific, potentially unconventional behaviors (e.g., Hendrick & Hendrick, 1987; Purnine, Carey, & Jorgensen, 1996), the ATUSS utilizes only global items.

This approach allows researchers to accurately determine the extent to which a general tendency toward unconventional sex predicts engagement in specific sexual behaviors—whether those behaviors are conventional or unconventional—without the risk of item overlap leading to spurious associations (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987). The scale is also useful for investigating the distal sources of these preferences, such as underlying personality traits or previous sexual experiences, and examining the impact of unconventional preferences on relationship satisfaction.

Construct

The ATUSS measures the psychological construct of general unconventional sexual preference. This construct reflects the degree to which an individual perceives enjoyment in sexual behaviors that are considered non-traditional, out-of-the-ordinary, or unusual by societal standards.

The scale focuses exclusively on subjective attitudes and preferences, rather than frequency of specific behaviors. A high score indicates a strong psychological inclination toward sexual novelty and experimentation, serving as a foundational measure of sexual openness related to non-normative practices.

Validity

The ATUSS demonstrated strong predictive validity across two distinct samples: 204 undergraduate college students and 36 recently married couples. In both groups, ATUSS scores showed significant associations with the reported enjoyment of various specific unconventional sexual behaviors.

In the undergraduate sample, ATUSS scores were strongly associated with enjoyment of specific practices, including anal sex (r = .39), dominant/submissive sex (r = .58), and sex in unique places (r = .59). The married couples sample showed similar strong correlations. For husbands, associations were: anal sex (r = .61), dominant/submissive sex (r = .76), and sex in unique places (r = .62). For wives, the correlations were slightly lower but still significant: anal sex (r = .42), dominant/submissive sex (r = .60), and sex in unique places (r = .39).

Furthermore, mean comparisons revealed significant gender differences in the married sample, with husbands (M = 19.39, SD = 6.79) reporting significantly higher unconventional preferences than wives (M = 15.39, SD = 4.74), t(35) = 3.94, p < .001. However, the preferences of husbands and wives were highly correlated (r = .48). In the undergraduate sample, while males reported slightly higher preferences (M = 20.18, SD = 6.50) than females (M = 19.13, SD = 5.65), this difference was not statistically significant, t(202) = 1.23, p = .22.

Reliability

The ATUSS exhibited high internal consistency across all tested groups, as measured by Cronbach’s Alpha (α).

• In the sample of 204 undergraduate college students:
  • Males: α = .80
  • Females: α = .76
• In the sample of 36 recently married couples:
  • Husbands: α = .86
  • Wives: α = .70

These values indicate that the 5 items reliably measure the same underlying construct of unconventional sexual preferences, demonstrating acceptable to excellent reliability across different genders and relationship statuses.

Factor Analysis

Although an explicit factor analysis was not detailed in the source material, the design of the ATUSS—comprising only 5 global items intended to measure a “general disposition”—strongly implies that the instrument is unidimensional. The high internal consistency scores further support the interpretation that all items load onto a single factor representing attitudes toward unconventional sex.

As a brief, focused measure, the scale avoids the need for complex multi-factor modeling, focusing instead on capturing the overarching tendency toward sexual novelty, making it robust for use in studies where general sexual disposition is the primary variable of interest.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychological Scale / Self-Report Measure

Format: Paper-pencil or computerized administration.

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: Adults and young adults.

Age Group: College-age students and married adults.

Population Details: Tested on samples of undergraduate college students (N=204) and recently married heterosexual couples (N=36).

Test Methodology: Respondents rate items on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1=Strongly Disagree to 7=Strongly Agree). The administration is rapid, requiring less than 2 minutes for completion. Scoring involves summing the item responses, resulting in a total score ranging from 5 to 35.

Keywords

Sexual measurement, psychometrics, sexual behavior, relationship satisfaction, sexual research, internal consistency, Cronbach’s alpha, dispositional attitudes.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Carolyn Wenner, Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Contact the corresponding author for permissions regarding research or clinical use.

Fee: N/A (Standard academic scale, contact author for details).

Test Year: The scale was developed and published as part of academic research. The specific publication year of the scale instrument itself is tied to the primary research paper (source citation not provided in original text, but authors are listed).

Reference’s

• Fincham, F. D., & Bradbury, T. N. (1987). The assessment of marital quality: A reevaluation. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 797–809.
• Hendrick, S., & Hendrick, C. (1987). Multidimensionality of sexual attitudes. The Journal of Sex Research, 23, 502–526.
• Purnine, D., Carey, M., & Jorgensen, R. (1996). The inventory of dyadic heterosexual preferences: Development and psychometric evaluation. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 375–387.

Items of the Attitudes Toward Unconventional Sex Scale

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

1. I would describe my sexual preferences as “non-traditional.” I like sex most when it is out-of-the-ordinary.‌‌
2. I like sex with my partner to be unpredictable.
3. I like to experiment with different sexual practices.
4. Some people might think my sexual preferences are unusual.