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Development of a structure-validated Sexual Dream Experience Questionnaire (SDEQ) in Chinese university students
Wanzhen Chen1, Ke Qin1, Weiwei Su1
1Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry/School of Public Health, Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Background:
Sexual dreams reflect the waking-day life, social problems and ethical concerns. The related experience includes different people and settings, and brings various feelings, but there is no systematic measure available to date.
Methods:
We have developed a statement-matrix measuring the sexual dream experience and trialed it in a sample of 390 young Chinese university students who had a life-long sexual dream.
Results:
After both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we have established a satisfactory model of four-factor (32 items). Together with an item measuring the sexual dream frequency, we developed a Sexual Dream Experience Questionnaire (SDEQ) based on the 32 items, and subsequently named four factors (scales) as joyfulness, aversion, familiarity and bizarreness. No gender differences were found on the four scale scores, and no correlations were found between the four scales and the sexual dream frequency or the sexual experience in real life.
Conclusion:
The SDEQ might help to characterize the sexual dreams in the healthy people and psychiatric patients.
