Assessing Enacted Sexual Stigma toward Gay and Bisexual Men in the Military: The Enacted Sexual Stigma Experiences Scale in Military Service

Abstract

Gay and bisexual military servicemembers experience disproportionately high rates of victimization due to enacted sexual stigma (ESS). This study formulated a new scale, called the Enacted Sexual Stigma Experiences Scale in Military Service (ESSESiMS) for gay and bisexual servicemembers, and examined its psychometric propensities. The five-item ESSESiMS was first developed based on the results of focus group interviews with 12 participants. A total of 399 gay and bisexual men who have experience of the military service participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was implemented to determine the factor structure of the ESSESiMS; the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the ESSESiMS was also examined. The EFA results indicate that the ESSESiMS should have a single-item structure. The ESSESiMS exhibited acceptable internal consistency and concurrent validity. Incidents of ESS in the ESSESiMS were significantly associated with perceived sexual stigma outside the military service and with higher levels of depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. The results of our study supported the psychometric properties of the newly developed ESSESiMS for assessing the experiences of ESS among gay and bisexual servicemembers in Taiwan. Experiences of ESS toward gay and bisexual servicemembers were common; ESS was significantly associated with adverse mental health outcomes.

Spanish adaptation and validation of sexual distress scale in Colombian population

“…Although traditionally, some research has shown SD as a construct that is found on the opposite side to sexual pleasure ( Snyder & Berg, 1983 ), more recently, they have been considered as independent constructs that require individual attention for the creation of evaluation measures that are not interchangeable or for the prevention the overlapping of the effectiveness of the treatments developed for sexual dysfunctions ( Stephenson & Meston, 2010 ). The SD has not only been shown to be present in various populations ( Lin et al, 2023 ; Lin et al, 2017 ; Lin et al, 2022 ) but has also been shown to be associated with negative impacts on the sexual life of individuals with relevant medical conditions (e.g., endometriosis, dyspareunia, epilepsy, prostate cancer, and heart disease; Lin et al, 2020 ; Lin et al, 2022 ; Privitera et al, 2023 ; Saffari et al, 2017 ; Santos-Iglesias et al, 2020 ). Although there are no data in Colombia regarding the relationship between sexual functioning and SD, the fact that around 44.6 % of cisgender women and 33.5 % of cisgender men may experience a possible difficulty related to their sexual functioning ( Marchal-Bertrand et al, 2016 ) can highlight the importance of timely detection of SD in the Colombian population.…”