The Sexual Compulsivity Scale:
Further Development and Use
With HIV-Positive Persons
Seth C. Kalichman and David Rompa
Center for AIDS Intervention Research
Medical College of Wisconsin
We examined the reliability and validity of the Sexual Compulsivity Scale for use in
assessing HIV-positive men and women. Measures collected from 287 men and
women recruited from the community, the majority of whom were African American
and over the age of 30, showed that the Sexual Compulsivity Scale was reliable for
men (α = .89) and women (α = .92). Correlations with measures of sexual behaviors
and numbers of sex partners supported the concurrent validity of the Sexual
Compulsivity Scale for men and women. Results of discriminant function analyses
that included participant age, use of nonalcohol drugs, the Sexual Compulsivity
Scale, and scores on measures of trait anxiety, obsessive–compulsiveness, future pes-
simism, cognitive depression, and borderline personality characteristics showed that
sexual compulsivity clearly discriminated between persons with 1 or no sex partners
and persons with multiple partners in the past 3 months, for both men and women,
suggesting evidence for criterion-related validity. Associations between sexual
compulsivity scores and other markers of psychopathology showed different patterns
for men and women; sexual compulsivity was associated with indexes of
psychopathology in men but not in women. We conclude that the Sexual
Compulsivity Scale is reliable and valid in assessing men and women infected with
HIV, although sexual compulsivity may present differently between genders in rela-
tion to other forms of psychopathology.
The assessment of personality and individual differences has made numerous con-
tributions to health promotion and disease prevention, including but not limited to
Type A personality constructs that predict heart disease (e.g., Labarthe, 1998), the
relation between dispositional optimism and stress reactions (e.g., Taylor &
Aspinwall, 1996), and the role of personality traits in the development of hyperten-
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT, 76(3), 379–395
Copyright © 2001, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.