Considerable evidence exists that pregnancy disrupts sexual activity and intimacy among married couples. In this study, the impact of a psychoeducational intervention on the sexual and marital satisfaction, and sexual behavior was evaluated. The intervention was offered to 19 women in their seventh and eighth month of pregnancy and their husbands. Eighteen couples served as controls for a total N of 74. Subjects were recruited from obstetrical and family practices in the southeastern and northwestern United States. A post-test only experimental design was employed; couples were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control groups. / Follow-up data were collected at three months postpartum, using the Demographics, Sexual Diversity, and Sexual Frequency Scales of Pregnancy and Sexuality Questionnaire developed for this study; and the Marital Satisfaction, Sexual Relationship, and Communication scales of ENRICH (Olson, Fournier, and Druckman, 1983). The psychoeducational intervention was not found to have a significant effect on either sexual diversity or sexual frequency at follow-up, when controlled for prepregnancy sexual behavior, age, geographic location, sex, marital satisfaction, income, and number of years married. / Consistent with the reports of others in the literature, significant correlations were found between communication and diversity and frequency of sexual activity at three months postpartum among men in the treatment group, but not among women in the treatment group or men and women in the control group. Men have been reported to observe less change in sexuality during pregnancy and childbirth than women. / Recommendations for future research were offered to address limitations of the present study and other issues. In particular, replication of this study using more intensive, repeated psychoeducational interventions in group formats and collecting data at three, six, and nine months follow-up was recommended. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-06, Section: B, page: 3206. / Major Professor: Mary W. Hicks. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76648 |
| Contributors | Gray, Robin Fern., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 110 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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