- 59 views
- 100 downloads
Virtues, responsible actions, and sexual well-being: A latent profile analysis
-
- Author / Creator
- Oleksuik, McKenna R
-
For many, the pursuit of a healthy romantic and sexual relationship is a significant component of their lives. However, the use of satisfaction measures may not be sufficient to capture and understand the underlying factors and nuances that govern sexual well-being. The strong relationality model (Galovan & Schramm, 2018) seeks to use a relational ontology based in connectivity, responsiveness, and virtues to bridge the gaps left in our understanding of couple relationships by the primary usage of individualistic measures of satisfaction. Using the strong relationality perspective, the following two studies endeavour to explore how virtues and responsible actions present in relationships correlate to measures of sexual well-being, including sexual satisfaction, sexual flourishing, and sexual frequency. I hypothesized that higher reported levels of sexual quality measures would be associated to higher levels of reported virtues and responsible actions. I also hypothesized that, in Study 2, partners were more likely to share the same profile group than to be in different profile groups. Latent profile analysis was used to find naturally occurring groups of reported virtue and responsible action use within the study populations (Study 1 single-responder, N =1242; Study 2 partner-responder, N = 615 couples). The three-profile solution found for both studies (Study 1 - Low = 400, Mid = 747, High = 275; Study 2 - Low = 508, Mid = 587, High = 75) had the best model fit for our samples and was then used as a training model to evaluate the sexual quality measures of respondents in those profiles. All sexual quality measures followed the same trend as the virtues and responsible actions with the highest virtue and responsible action scores associated to the highest sexual measure scores in both studies (Study 1 Sex sat. L = 3.534, M = 4.904, H = 5.637; Study 1 Sex flour. L = 3.135, M = 4.181, H = 4.818; Study 2 Sex sat. L = 2.996, M = 3.878, H = 4.440; Study 2 Sex freq. L = 4.649, M = 5.260, H = 5.498). Additionally, results from Study 2 revealed that partners were more likely to have been placed in the same profile. The results of these two studies provided evidence for my hypotheses and for the use of the strong relationality model in evaluating sexual well-being in relationships. Practical applications for these results could be used in the evaluation and categorization of couples for therapy-based interventions, allocating resources and time to those who find themselves in the lower profiles. Future researchers should endeavour to revalidate the virtue and responsible action measures, asses the relationship between the virtues and “vices,” and, finally, how these concepts and measures may differ between contexts, including sexual relationships.
-
- Graduation date
- Fall 2022
-
- Type of Item
- Thesis
-
- Degree
- Master of Science
-
- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.