Sexuality Attitudes Reassessment (SAR): Historical and New Considerations for Measuring its Effectiveness

Abstract

In recent years, leading scholars in the field of sexology have been calling for more professionals who are primarily sexologists rather than professionals in other fields who specialize in sexuality. Such professionals require specialized training that meets their specific needs. The Sexuality Attitude Reassessment (SAR) has been established as a routine training intervention for sexuality professionals. The SAR has been used to train American sexologists and other helping professionals to be sensitive to sexual diversity and the sexual behavior of others. Attempts have been made to measure the SAR's effectiveness using several different measures and the research has yielded inconsistent and contradictory results. These measures traditionally look for changes in knowledge and attitudes. The authors of this work posit that a new construct must be developed to measure the success of the SAR as a method of sensitivity training. The proposed construct, sexological worldview, is demonstrated to be a more pertinent construct than attitude change.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual Attitudes Reassessment
• SAR
• sexology
• sexologist
• training
• worldview
• attitudes
• cultural sensitivity

Notes

1. In the literature, the use of the terminology “sexuality professionals” is more abundant than “sexologists,” as this term has been difficult for some professionals to use practically as evidenced by the discussion above. For the purposes of this article and the review of the relevant literature, at times when the authors use the term “sexologist” it may in fact have been “sexuality professional” in the cited literature.