The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a self-report measure designed to assess the high-order personality traits of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, the BFI was translated from English into 28 languages and administered to 17,837 individuals from 56 nations. The resulting cross-cultural data set was used to address three main questions: Does the factor structure of the English BFI fully replicate across cultures? How valid are the BFI trait profiles of individual nations? And how are personality traits distributed throughout the world? The five-dimensional structure was robust across major regions of the world. Trait levels were related in predictable ways to self-esteem, sociosexuality, and national personality profiles. People from the geographic regions of South America and East Asia were significantly different in openness from those inhabiting other world regions. The discussion focuses on limitations of the current data set and important directions for future research.

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, a total of 17,804 participants from 62 cultural regions completedthe RelationshipQuestionnaire(RQ), a self-reportmeasure of adult romanticattachment. Correlational analyses within each culture suggested that the Model of Self and the Model of Other scales of the RQ were psychometrically valid within most cultures. Contrary to expectations, the Model of Self and Model of Other dimensions of the RQ did not underlie the four-category model of attachment in the same way across all cultures. Analyses of specific attachment styles revealed that secure romantic attachment was normative in 79% of cultures and that preoccupied romantic attachment was particularly prevalent in East Asian cultures. Finally, the romantic attachment profiles of individual nations were correlated with sociocultural indicators in ways that supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment and basic human mating strategies.

Knowledge in the research fields of body image and sexuality has significantly increased in the last decade. In this review, data from 57 studies were compiled for a review of empirical evidence regarding the association between sexuality and body image among healthy women. The overall conclusion is that body image issues can affect all domains of sexual functioning. Cognitions and self-consciousness seem to be key factors in understanding the complex relationships between women's body image and sexuality. Body evaluations and cognitions not only interfere with sexual responses and experiences during sexual activity, but also with sexual behavior, sexual avoidance, and risky sexual behavior.

The present study investigated the contribution of a contextual body image perspective to understanding disordered eating in high performance women athletes. Because existing questionnaires were not suitable for measuring body image in the contexts of sport and daily life, we developed the 'Contextual Body Image Questionnaire for Athletes' (CBIQA) in which body image is divided into 'appearance', 'muscularity', 'thin-fat self-evaluations' and 'thin-fat perceived opinions of others', in both contexts. In Study 1, the internal validity and reliability of this questionnaire was established in a general, heterogeneous sample of female sport participants and exercisers. In Study 2, the external validity was determined in a sample of 52 high performance women athletes who mainly participated in aesthetic or endurance sports, 19 of which were classified with and 33 without disordered eating. The results of Study 2 showed that both 'thin-fat self' and 'thin-fat opinions of others' in sport made significant unique contributions to explaining eating disorder variance, indicating the important role of athletic body image. In conclusion, the contextual body image approach seems to be a promising framework for a better understanding of athletes' disordered eating.

The "sexual trajectory" is an age-graded set of various new sexual experiences, defined by three key dimensions: sequence, duration, and timing. A comprehensive description of sexual trajectories creates the possibility to investigate potential risks of certain trajectory types. The present study attempted to answer three questions: (1) Is it possible to identify a typology in (the early stages of) sexual trajectories? (2) Is sexual trajectory type related to demographic characteristics, such as sex, ethnic background, and educational level? (3) What are the associations between sexual trajectory type and recent sexual risk behavior? A representative Dutch sample of 1,263 males and 1,353 females (M = 20.46 years; range, 12-25) who had engaged in sexual intercourse completed a questionnaire about sexual (health) behavior. About three quarters of participants followed a progressive sexual trajectory from less intimate (e.g., kissing) to more intimate behavior (e.g., sexual intercourse). Immigrant groups and less educated youth were more likely to follow a nonlinear trajectory. A progressive trajectory was associated with a higher likelihood of consistent contraceptive use with the most recent partner and, for girls, with a lower likelihood of having unprotected anal intercourse with the last partner. It was hypothesized that the nonlinear trajectory could be ascribed to a lack of opportunities or skills to plan and steer early sexual experiences and that these limitations were fairly stable over time. Sexual education should aim at providing adolescents with sufficient (self) knowledge and skills to construct their sexual trajectories according to their own wishes or needs.