ORIGINAL PAPER
Sexual activity of pregnant Polish women and the assessment of the marital relation quality
Submission date: 2014-02-06
Acceptance date: 2014-02-06
Online publication date: 2014-02-04
Publication date: 2014-01-31
Health Psychology Report 2013;1(1):9-17
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Background
The aim of the research was to present sexual functioning of pregnant women in terms of their assessment of the sexual life and marital relation. The study included 61 pregnant women (31 with high-risk pregnancy and 30 with a normal course of pregnancy), aged on average 28.5 years and pregnant on average for 27.5 weeks.
Participants and procedure
The study was based on the sociodemographic questionnaire The Female Sexual Function Questionnaire, SFQ28 (designed by Quirk et al., 2005), the Sexual Quality of Life Questionnaire – Female Version, SQoL-F (designed by Symonds et al., 2005), and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, DAS (designed by Cieślak, 1989).
Results
The obtained results reveal changes in sexual functioning during pregnancy, mostly in terms of desire and excitement. The groups differed significantly in terms of sexual activity. Women with pathological pregnancy obtained lower results on the scales of desire, arousal, orgasm and satisfaction with sexual relationship. With every subsequent pregnancy week, both groups obtained lower results on the scales of arousal, orgasm and satisfaction with sexual activity. Neither pregnancy nor its length was related to the assessment of satisfaction with marital relation.
Conclusions
The conducted data analysis indicates that the subjective assessment of sexual life is related to the assessment of marital relation on the scale of emotional expression and relation coherence. No relation of sexual activity and sexual life with the assessment of the quality of marital relation was proved. However, the assessment of sexual life is related significantly to the assessment of the quality of marital relation.
The aim of the research was to present sexual functioning of pregnant women in terms of their assessment of the sexual life and marital relation. The study included 61 pregnant women (31 with high-risk pregnancy and 30 with a normal course of pregnancy), aged on average 28.5 years and pregnant on average for 27.5 weeks.
Participants and procedure
The study was based on the sociodemographic questionnaire The Female Sexual Function Questionnaire, SFQ28 (designed by Quirk et al., 2005), the Sexual Quality of Life Questionnaire – Female Version, SQoL-F (designed by Symonds et al., 2005), and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, DAS (designed by Cieślak, 1989).
Results
The obtained results reveal changes in sexual functioning during pregnancy, mostly in terms of desire and excitement. The groups differed significantly in terms of sexual activity. Women with pathological pregnancy obtained lower results on the scales of desire, arousal, orgasm and satisfaction with sexual relationship. With every subsequent pregnancy week, both groups obtained lower results on the scales of arousal, orgasm and satisfaction with sexual activity. Neither pregnancy nor its length was related to the assessment of satisfaction with marital relation.
Conclusions
The conducted data analysis indicates that the subjective assessment of sexual life is related to the assessment of marital relation on the scale of emotional expression and relation coherence. No relation of sexual activity and sexual life with the assessment of the quality of marital relation was proved. However, the assessment of sexual life is related significantly to the assessment of the quality of marital relation.
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Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
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