Romantic and sexual self-esteem, a new construct: Its relationship to current and early childhood sexual experiences

The construct of sexual self-esteem (SSE) was first proposed by Finkelhor (1979). Reed\u27s (1987) Romantic and Sexual Self-esteem Scale (RSSE) sought to expand, clarify and increase the internal coherence of the sexual self-esteem construct. The present study was designed to increase construct validity by examining the relationships among SSE factors (satisfaction, body image, mutuality, and confidence) and dating and sexual behaviors. Its discriminant capacity was also examined comparing sexually abused and non-sexually abused participants. Participants were 655 undergraduate psychology students. Initial evidence provided moderate construct validity. Particularly, the RSSS Body Image and RSSS Total scores shared the strongest relationships with behavioral variables, measured by the Dating and Sexuality Questionnaire (DSQ). For women Mutuality and Body Image behaviors measured on the DSQ shared greatest variance with Total RSSS. For women, Total RSSS was associated with greater frequency of high school and college dating. For men, Confidence, followed by Body Image and Mutuality measured on the DSQ shared greatest variance with Total RSSS. For men, Total RSSS score was associated with greater numbers of dating partners and higher frequency of dating in college. Nearly 29% of the sample, 16 and under experienced one or more abusive experiences. Surprisingly, whether or not participants were abused made no mean difference on RSSS scores, suggesting that abuse does not impair SSE. Those participants abused within the family scored higher on Total RSSS and RSSS Mutuality than extra-familially abused participants. No other differences were found for several abuse dimensions. Suggestions are made for the lack of differences for abused and non-abused samples, and the potential usefulness for a construct of sexual self-esteem. Instruments designed with specific abuse dynamics in mind may enrich the study of sexual self-esteem and capture differences between abused and non-abused samples