Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1999

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

William Nugent

Committee Members

Deborah Welsh, Warren Jones, John Lounsbury

Abstract

This study attempted to develop and validate a reliable measure of sexual intimacy. A newly developed measure of sexual intimacy, the 30-item Sexual Intimacy Scale (SIS) was administered to 60 faculty, staff, graduate students and residents drawn from psychiatry, psychology, social work, and mental health departments. The sample aslo consisted of 65 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, undergraduate psychology students. The SIS evidenced high internal consistency, but weak evidence supporting its construct validity. Sexual intimacy was shown to be negatively related to fear of intimacy and positively related to social intimacy. Although significant, and in the predicted directions, these correlations were both only in the moderate range. The SIS was positively related to dyadic trust and relationship assessment. The scores on the dyadic trust measure correlated significantly higher with scores on the SIS measure than did the scores on the social intimacy measure. The correlation between the SIS scores and scores on the relationship assessment measure were significantly higher than the correlations between the SIS scores and either the social intimacy or the fear of intimacy scores. This finding is contradictory to the proposed hypothesis that scores on measures of intimacy would be more strongly correlated with the SIS scores. As predicted, weak correlations were found between scores on the SIS and a number of demographic variables.

An additional focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between sexual intimacy and adult attachment style. The data showed that sexual intimacy was significantly related to a measure of adult attachment style.

This research contributed to the development of a measure of sexual intimacy. Further refinement will be required before the measure will find common usage; however, there is evidence that the SIS as defined here does warrant further research. With a better understanding of the nature, content, and development of sexual intimacy, it may be easier to facilitate change when difficulties arise in a relationship, and to chart a couples progress in sexual relating over time.

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