Davidson Myles, Healey Jay
Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Department of Criminology, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Sex Offending. 2024 Sep 10;19:e13829. doi: 10.5964/sotrap.13829. eCollection 2024.
Sexual sadism refers to a sexual preference for fantasies and behaviours involving the infliction of humiliation, degradation, and suffering onto others. The conceptualization of sexual sadism remains a contentious issue in the literature, with some believing sexual sadism is qualitatively distinct from other deviant sexual preferences, while others suggest it lies on a continuum of sexually aggressive behaviours. This second approach, known as the Agonistic Continuum, is a relatively novel conceptualization of sexual sadism. Its companion scale, The Agonistic Continuum Scale (TACS), was created to measure sexual sadism as a dimensional construct in both forensic and community samples. Despite several validation studies being conducted, the factor structure of the TACS has yet to be independently assessed. As such, the current study sought to assess the factorial validity and measurement invariance of the TACS in a community sample made up of primarily BDSM practitioners using a series of confirmatory factor analyses and latent profile analyses. 248 Canadian adults (65.3% females, 75.6% BDSM practitioners) completed a survey containing a demographic questionnaire and several measures of paraphilic interest including the TACS. Results of the factor analyses suggested a four-factor model provided the best fit to the data. However, incorporating sex as a multigroup analysis factor rendered this model a significantly worse fit. Further, latent profile analysis results supported the ability of the TACS to identify groups differing in sexual sadism severity but returned significantly different fit statistics across sex groups. Taken together, while the results of past studies were partially replicated, our findings call into question the appropriateness of the TACS in mixed-sex and non-community samples.
性施虐癖是指对涉及羞辱、贬低他人并使其遭受痛苦的幻想和行为有性偏好。性施虐癖的概念在文献中仍然是一个有争议的问题，一些人认为性施虐癖在性质上与其他异常性偏好不同，而另一些人则认为它处于性侵犯行为的连续体上。第二种方法，即所谓的“争斗连续体”，是对性施虐癖相对新颖的概念化。其配套量表，即争斗连续体量表（TACS），旨在将性施虐癖作为一个维度结构在法医和社区样本中进行测量。尽管已经进行了几项验证研究，但TACS的因子结构尚未得到独立评估。因此，本研究旨在通过一系列验证性因子分析和潜在剖面分析，评估TACS在主要由BDSM从业者组成的社区样本中的因子效度和测量不变性。248名加拿大成年人（65.3%为女性，75.6%为BDSM从业者）完成了一项调查，该调查包含一份人口统计学问卷和几项包括TACS在内的性偏好兴趣测量。因子分析结果表明，四因子模型对数据的拟合效果最佳。然而，将性别作为多组分析因子会使该模型的拟合效果显著变差。此外，潜在剖面分析结果支持TACS识别性施虐癖严重程度不同的群体的能力，但不同性别群体的拟合统计量差异显著。综上所述，虽然过去研究的结果部分得到了重复，但我们的研究结果对TACS在混合性别和非社区样本中的适用性提出了质疑。
