The More You Know: Sexual Knowledge as a Predictor of Sexual Well-Being

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO), defines sexual well-being as a multifaceted construct, consisting of more than absence of disease or experiences of pleasure. Further, the WHO suggests that sexual knowledge should contribute to sexual well-being. We examined the relationship between personal sexual knowledge–knowing one’s individual sexual preferences–and sexual health knowledge–awareness of reproduction, contraception, and diseases–and sexual well-being, comprised of sexual satisfaction, assertiveness, and competence in a sample of 484 emerging adults. Personal sexual knowledge but not sexual health knowledge, was a significant predictor of sexual well-being. Further, this relationship was moderated by gender (stronger for women) but not prior sex education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes

1 Original preregistration of analyses on AsPredicted < collab> </collab>(https://aspredicted.org/779_7TW) indicated that analyses would use PROCESS Model 1 (Hayes, 2018). However, after further consideration, the authors decided that in order to reduce potential familywise error, both moderators should be entered into the model simultaneously. Therefore, analyses were conducted using PROCESS Model 2. Data can be found at https://researchbox.org/554&PEER_REVIEW_passcode=wwwTGA

2 A total of two participants had missing scores on health sexual knowledge, resulting in two less observations for the analyses using this variable.