Validity of the Chinese Version of the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women with a New Scoring Algorithm and Comparison of Normative and Recurrently Depressed Han Chinese Population

The Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women (BISF‐W) is proved to be a useful instrument to assess female sexual function, but the validation information of its Chinese version is still unavailable. It has not been used to assess female sexual function among Han Chinese women with recurrent depression. This study aims to validate the Chinese version of BISF‐W (C‐BISF‐W) with a new scoring algorithm and evaluate the impact of recurrent depression on sexual function among Han Chinese women. Three groups of subjects, 63 unmedicated patients with recurrent depression, 50 medicated remitted patients with recurrent depression, and 92 healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Sexual function was assessed with C‐BISF‐W. A new scoring algorithm was developed to provide an overall composite score (G) and seven dimension scores: desire (D1), arousal (D2), frequency of sexual activity (D3), orgasm (D4), sexual interaction (D5), relationship dissatisfaction (D6), and problems affecting sexual function (D7). Psychometric analyses were conducted. Four factors whose Eigenvalues were higher than 1 were extracted, explaining 61.426% of the total variance. Compared with healthy age‐matched control, unmedicated cases scored significantly lower in G, D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5, whereas these were higher in D6 and D7. No significant difference was found in the scores of G, D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5 between remitted cases and control, but the former scored higher in D6 and D7 than the latter. In comparison with unmedicated cases, medicated remitted cases got a higher score in G, D1, D2, and D5. For the healthy control, sexual function (G) was negatively correlated with age. With the new scoring algorithm, C‐BISF‐W is proved to be a validated instrument to assess female sexual function. The impact of recurrent depression on female sexual function is negatively profound and extensive. Han Z, Gan Z, Han H, Chen J, Li K, and Guan N. Validity of the Chinese version of the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women with a new scoring algorithm and comparison of normative and recurrently depressed Han Chinese population. J Sex Med 2014;11:439–446.