William Atkins
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 20:18
Science -
Health
Page 2 of 3
The scientific study used 362 women and 241 men between the ages of 18 and 23 years. The participants were asked such questions as “Women’s genitals are beautiful” and “Women’s genitals are ugly.”
Within the study, the “Attitudes Toward Women's Genitals Scale” (ATWGS) was developed. According to her journal abstract, it was created in three phases:
(1) “elicitation, which involved a comprehensive literature review and surveys completed by 370 men and women;”
(2) “development, review, and revision of an initial item pool; and”
(3) “survey administration and psychometric analysis, which involved an initial survey administration to 604 men and women and a second administration, for the purposes of establishing temporal stability of the scale, to 16 individuals.”
The scale resulted in ten items that correlated well with an already-existing five-item scale called the Sexual Opinion Survey. The ATWGS seemed to indicate that it could be used reliably in sexual therapy within a medical environment.
Dr. Herbenick stated within her abstract,
“The ATWGS also showed evidence of predictive capacity in that women's scale scores differed significantly based on their history of cunnilingus, gynecological care, vibrator use, and orgasm.”
The study found that men had higher scores on the ATWGS than did women. Such higher scores indicate that men have more positive sexual attitudes than women.
The abstract stated,
“For men, there were significant ATWGS score differences based on their experience with cunnilingus. Also, men scored significantly higher on the ATWGS than did women …, indicating more positive attitudes.”
Page three concludes with more conclusions from the Herbenick study.
