Consistency of three different questionnaires for evaluating sexual function in healthy young women

BACKGROUND: Most studies on female sexual dysfunction are performed in population inventories and under specific clinical conditions. These approaches are performed using validated psychometric scales. Different scales to assess sexual function use different numbers of questions to characterize their domains. They also may or may not include domains of interaction between sexual partners. The objective of this study was to compare the precision between scales to be able to analyze their accuracy for better diagnosis of sexual dysfunction. METHODS: Fifty (50) healthy young women were enrolled in this study. Three questionnaires (FSFI, SQ-F, and GRISS) were applied to assess sexual function (n = 44). The accuracy measured by the area under the ROC curve (AUC) for individual domains and to cross-validated pairwise comparison of the three analyzed instruments was used. Kruskall-Wallis test to analyze individual domains of the scales was also used.The P-value was established as 0.05. RESULTS: The results showed that all domains and total FSFI and GRISS scores were significantly different between normal and dysfunctional women, but not for SQ-F domains. Indeed, AUC accuracy varied from excellent-good domain discrimination for FSFI and GRISS, but fair-poor for SQ-F. For the paired comparison between the three questionnaires a fair accuracy was detected. The specificity percentage was around 84% whereas that for sensibility was low, around 30%. CONCLUSIONS: The best agreement was between FSFI and SQ-F, probably being related to high similar shared questions when compared to GRISS. The agreement between SQ-F and GRISS was low possible due to low number of questions in SQ-F to characterize similar domains. This study evidenced high agreement between scales to sensitivity and low agreement for specificity, thereby conferring fair accuracy between them. Thus, the limited grade for discriminatory capacity (AUC) for sexual response should be considered when comparing results from these three different questionnaires and also when comparing with other different scales. In addition, despite the diversity of scales, the high reliability and fit for their desire domain suggest that the FSFI scale has good accuracy for the current clinical assessment of women’s sexual health. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03241524. Retrospectively registered on 08/02/2017.