Background: STIs, principally HIV/AIDS, are public health problems that are transmitted by sexual risk behaviours, which have been associated with the sexual sensation seeking (an specific personality factor). In South American context, there are no measurement instruments with psychometric evidence for their use and, in other contexts, only the Sexual sensation seeking scale (Kalichman et al., 1994) is available, which is outdated in content and validity evidence. The purpose of this work is development a scale, in accordance with contemporary psychometric standards, to assess sexual sensation seeking for South Americans young people and adults. Method: instrumental study, with time-space sampling (n=813) of undergraduate students from the two Chilean cities with the highest rates of HIV. Results: Final scale have 8 items to assess two dimensions: 1) sexual emotions seeking; and 2) tendency to sexual boredom. The identified structure provides adequate levels of reliability (ω> .8; α> .7), presents validity evidence, based on the internal structure of the test, using CFA and ESEM (CFI> .95, TLI> .95, RMSEA <. 06), and based on the convergence with other measures (sexual activity with multiple partners, inadequate or insufficient use of protective barriers and sexual activity under the influence of alcohol or drugs). Conclusions: The Multidimensional Scale of Sexual Sensation Seeking evidence adequate psychometric properties to evaluate the search for sexual sensations in equivalents samples.
Measuring Cognitive Engagement: An Overview of Measurement Instruments and Techniques
