Measuring Sexual Communication in Adolescent Dating Relationships in Vietnam: Development and Validation of the Sexual Communications Scales for Attitudes, Self-Efficacy, and Behavior

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sexual communication improves relationship quality and the sexual and reproductive health of both partners. Much of the research on sexual communication among adolescents has been conducted in settings of the Global North and focuses narrowly on sexual health and condom use. Building on prior measures of sexual communication, we developed a set of three scales to measure sexual communication attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior in adolescent dating relationships and administered the measures to 793 first-year male undergraduates 18–24 years in Hanoi, Vietnam. We used factor analysis to explore and confirm factor structure and assess invariance across relationship history and over time, suggesting a seven-item, two-factor attitudes scale and five-item, unidimensional scales for efficacy and behavior. Participants reported positive attitudes toward sexual communication, with low-to-moderate self-efficacy and behavior. All scales showed good convergent and discriminant validity. These related measures may be useful for identifying individual attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavior relevant to sexual violence prevention programming for adolescents.