High Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Sexual Functioning

• Autor(a) principal: Nave, Carina de Fátima Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/9732
• topic: Alta Sensibilidade; Diferenças de Género; Funcionamento Sexual; Género; Sensibilidade de Processamento Sensorial; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Psicologia

This dissertation is part of the second year of the second cycle of studies in Clinical and Health Psychology. The document is then constituted by a first part that corresponds to a scientific article, subdivided into four parts - introduction, procedure, results and discussion ; and a second part that includes a theoretical annex relating to the variables under study in the scientific article, which is subdivided into four parts - a first dedicated to the variable Sensory Processing Sensitivity, a second dedicated to Sexual Functioning, a third dedicated to the relationship between Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Sexual Functioning, and a fourth where we address the Gender variable. The aim of this research is to evaluate to what extent the levels of Sensory Processing Sensitivity are related to sexual functioning, estimating the mediating role that gender could have in this relationship. We collected a sample of 1054 subjects, 34.3% were men (n=362) and 64.9% were women (n=684), with ages between 18 and 80 (M=29.4; SD=11.9). First, we applied a socio-demographic questionnaire. Then, to measure SPS we used the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (Aron & Aron, 1997) and, to assess sexual functioning, we used a Portuguese validated version of the Massachusetts General Hospital – Sexual Functioning Questionnaire (Labbate & Lare, 2001). We found that SPS and sexual functioning are statistically negatively correlated (-.093; p=.03). We also found that there are statistically significant differences in sexual functioning according to gender (t(df)=7.042; p=<.05), and according to the presence of lower or higher levels of SPS (t(df)=3.599; p<.05). Finally, we found Gender as responsible for 6.2% of the total variance in sexual functioning. This work allowed not only the acquisition of research skills, but also the extension of personal knowledge about the matter subject, and also contribute significantly to the national scientific production on an important, significant and little investigated topic at national and international level.