Štulhofer Aleksandar, Jurin Tanja, Graham Cynthia, Janssen Erick, Træen Bente
1Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, I. Lučića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
2Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.
Eur J Ageing. 2019 Mar 25;17(1):43-54. doi: 10.1007/s10433-019-00509-x. eCollection 2020 Mar.
Sexual health research tends to focus on problematic aspects of sexuality. This also applies to research on sexuality in older men and women, where attention has been primarily on the negative impact of aging. To contribute to the emerging interest in positive (successful) sexual aging, we aimed to: (1) further validate a recently developed 5-dimensional measure of sexual well-being (Štulhofer et al. in J Happiness Stud, 2018. 10.1007/s10902-018-0049-1) and (2) explore the structure of associations among emotional intimacy, frequency of sexual intercourse, and sexual well-being in older European couples. Using data from a 2016 community-based survey of 218 Norwegian, 207 Danish, 135 Belgian, and 117 Portuguese couples aged 60-75 years, we applied actor-partner interdependence structural modeling approach to confirm the validity of the sexual well-being measure in couples and explore a path analytic model in which the frequency of sexual intercourse was hypothesized to mediate the association between emotional intimacy and sexual well-being. Although we observed consistent and significant actor effects, with emotional intimacy and frequency of sexual intercourse predicting both male and female partners' sexual well-being across countries, the proposed mediation was observed only in Norwegian and Portuguese men and Norwegian and Belgian women. Partner effects were gender-specific; male partner's emotional intimacy was related to his female partner's reported frequency of sex and sexual well-being but not the other way around. Apart from being one of the few cross-cultural assessments of successful sexual aging, this study's findings support the use of a new sexual well-being measure in research on older adults' sexuality.
性健康研究往往侧重于性方面的问题。这也适用于对老年男性和女性性行为的研究，其中注意力主要集中在衰老的负面影响上。为了促进对积极（成功）的性衰老这一新兴兴趣，我们旨在：（1）进一步验证最近开发的一种5维度性幸福感测量方法（Štulhofer等人，发表于《幸福研究杂志》，2018年。doi:10.1007/s10902-018-0049-1），以及（2）探讨欧洲老年夫妇中情感亲密、性交频率和性幸福感之间的关联结构。利用2016年一项基于社区的调查数据，该调查涉及218对挪威夫妇、207对丹麦夫妇、135对比利时夫妇和117对葡萄牙夫妇，年龄在60 - 75岁之间，我们应用了actor - partner相互依存结构建模方法来确认性幸福感测量方法在夫妇中的有效性，并探索一种路径分析模型，其中假设性交频率介导情感亲密和性幸福感之间的关联。尽管我们观察到一致且显著的actor效应，即情感亲密和性交频率在各个国家都能预测男性和女性伴侣的性幸福感，但所提出的中介效应仅在挪威和葡萄牙男性以及挪威和比利时女性中观察到。伴侣效应具有性别特异性；男性伴侣的情感亲密与他女性伴侣报告的性交频率和性幸福感相关，但反之则不然。除了是对成功性衰老的少数跨文化评估之一外，本研究的结果支持在老年人性行为研究中使用一种新的性幸福感测量方法。
