The Consequences of Compulsive Sexual Behavior: The Preliminary Reliability and Validity of the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Consequences Scale

Abstract

The consequences of any excessive behavior can serve as a proxy indicator of problem severity. This appears especially salient for the diagnosis of non-paraphilic compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) because of the influence of societal norms on the pathologizing of frequent consensual ego-syntonic sexual behavior. The current study is a preliminary examination of the psychometric properties, descriptive features, concurrent validity, and ability to detect change over time of a measure designed to assess the consequences of non-paraphilic CSB. The sample consisted of 34 (26 end of treatment) gay and bisexual men enrolled in a double-blind placebo-controlled medication trial testing the efficacy of an SSRI in reducing CSB symptoms. Results indicate that the measure demonstrated good internal and test-retest reliability, concurrent validity, and was able to detect change in symptoms over the course of the 12-week period. Items related to intimate relations were most resistant to change and items related to intrapersonal conflict and impulse control were most likely to change. No differences existed in the reduction of consequences between medication and placebo groups. Consequences were only moderately correlated with frequency measures suggesting these constructs should be examined separately. Taken together, results suggest that measuring consequences can reveal important clues into the domains most affected by CSB, provide clues into those domains that are resistant to change, and aid in individualized treatment planning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge members of the Project SPIN Research Team: David S. Bimbi, Alicia Kaplan, Andrew Kolodny, James Kelleher, Dennis Popeo, Lauren Priday, Ljiljana Radulovic, Payam Saadai, and James Sorrentino. The authors would also like to acknowledge Eli Coleman, Marshall Forstein, and Martin Kafka for their input into the project.

This study was conducted at the Department of Psychiatry of the Mount School of Medicine, New York, NY and the Hunter College Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST), New York, NY. The study was supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U62 CCU217852) and the National Institute of Mental Health through an Inter-Agency Agreement. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Notes

∗p < 0.05,

∗∗∗∗p < 0.0001.