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REVIEW
Contents Vol 22(2)

Assessing sexual health literacy: a systematic review of measures

Tiffany Chenneville https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5598-9387 A B * , Morgan Haskett https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6864-5559 A , Kaitlyn Ligman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9392-9123 A , Sarah M. Gardy https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6264-2517 C , Camielle Crampsie https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6691-5743 A and Trevor A. Hart https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5107-7452 D E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 140 7th Avenue South, Davis Hall 117, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA.

B School of Clinical Medicine, University of Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2017, South Africa.

C Department of Psychology, University of Florida, 945 Center Drive, Gainesville, FL 32603, USA.

D Department of Psychology, Toronto Metropolitan University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada.

E Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street Room 500, Toronto, ON M5T 3M7, Canada.

* Correspondence to: chennevi@usf.edu

Handling Editor: Edmond Pui Hang Choi

Sexual Health 22, SH24042 https://doi.org/10.1071/SH24042
Submitted: 4 March 2024  Accepted: 18 March 2025  Published: 3 April 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Sexual health literacy refers to the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform decisions and actions related to sexual health. Given the importance of sexual health literacy for improving health outcomes, it is prudent to identify sexual health literacy measures that can be used by healthcare providers, scholars and educators. To address this need, we used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to conduct a systematic review. This review examined 12 databases to identify existing sexual health literacy self-report scales, subscales or individual items that were available in English, developed for scale validation purposes, and published between 2002, the year the World Health Organization convened experts to provide a clear working definition of sexual health, and 2022. We conducted a risk of bias and quality assurance assessment of the nine articles that met inclusion criteria, and coded articles along the ten components of a sexual health model used as the theoretical framework. Findings revealed mixed quality of identified measures. None of the measures received positive ratings on all eight criteria assessed or addressed all components of the sexual health model. The results from this systematic review suggest the need for a culturally sensitive, valid and reliable scale to assess sexual health literacy that can be used by sexual health professionals to promote sexual health and to reduce deleterious sexual health outcomes.

Keywords: assessment, health outcomes, measures, PRISMA, scale, sexual health, sexual health literacy, sexual health model.

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