A number of factors complicate researcher's ability to provide comprehensive and meaningful assessment of treatment outcomes for female sexual dysfunction. These include: a lack of an agreed upon model or paradigm for delineating women's sexual response cycle, a lack of consensus regarding diagnostic definitions and classification of sub-types of sexual dysfunction, the known complexity of contextual factors contributing to women's sexual functioning, the high coexistence of sexual desire and arousal disorders in women, and the relative independence of subjective and physiological measures of sexual response in women. Consequently, the type of outcome measure selected can, to some extent, impact outcome results, and the use of multiple outcome measures may yield discrepant or inconsistent outcome results. Currently available techniques for assessing women\'s sexual function may be divided into four broad categories: (1) physiological measures of sexual arousal, including vaginal photoplethysmography and pelvic magnetic resonance imagining; (2) self-administered questionnaires; (3) event logs and daily diaries, and (4) clinical interviews. In this presentation I will review the advantages and disadvantages of each of these assessment techniques as they pertain to women\'s sexual function, briefly summarize the reliability and validity of such measures, and provide preliminary evidence as to which of these measurement techniques may be the most sensitive for detecting treatment-induced changes in women's sexual functioning.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: None disclosed
Recorded: Sydney, Australia, April 2007
more about this speaker
