The Sexual History and Adjustment Questionnaire (SHAQ)<\/strong>, developed by Robin J. Lewis and Louis H. Janda<\/a> (1988) at Old Dominion University<\/a>, is a multidimensional psychometric instrument designed to evaluate retrospective childhood experiences related to family sexuality and their relationship with adult psychosexual outcomes. Specifically, the SHAQ systematically measures: (a) retrospective recall of the frequency of exposure to parental and peer nudity during two critical developmental windows (ages 0\u20135 and 6\u201311 years); (b) co-sleeping behaviors, specifically the frequency of sharing a bed with parents across early and middle childhood; (c) perceived parental attitudes toward sexuality and open communication regarding sexual topics; (d) familial demonstrations of physical affection and associated discomfort; and (e) self-reported adult sexual adjustment, psychological self-regard, and sexual behaviors. Comprising 30 self-report items across multiple response formats\u2014primarily using 5-point Likert scales<\/a> with contextualized semantic anchors\u2014the SHAQ provides researchers and clinicians with empirical access to the developmental antecedents of adult sexual health. Psychometric evaluations of the instrument demonstrate robust internal consistency across its theoretically derived subscales, including Parental Nudity (Cronbach’s α = .74), Overall Nudity (α = .77), Parental Bed Sharing (α = .80), Maternal Attitudes (α = .77), Paternal Attitudes (α = .78), and Overall Attitudes (α = .78). By empirically operationalizing childhood domestic boundary dynamics without conflating them with overt pathology or abuse, the SHAQ has served as a foundational methodological tool in sexology, developmental psychopathology, and family systems research<\/span>.<\/p>\n Sexual History and Adjustment Questionnaire, SHAQ, childhood nudity exposure, parental bed sharing, co-sleeping, psychosexual development, parental sexual attitudes, adult sexual adjustment, family boundary dynamics, retrospective assessment<\/p>\n The Sexual History and Adjustment Questionnaire was conceived, developed, and empirically validated by Robin J. Lewis, Ph.D.<\/strong>, and Louis H. Janda, Ph.D.<\/strong> Both investigators conducted this work within the Department of Psychology at Old Dominion University<\/a> in Norfolk, Virginia. Robin J. Lewis has extensively contributed to research on human sexuality, gender roles, health psychology, and clinical assessment. Louis H. Janda is a recognized scholar in clinical psychology, psychological testing, and personality assessment, authoring numerous influential assessment texts and psychometric inventories throughout his academic tenure.<\/p>\n Institutional Correspondence: The primary purpose of the Sexual History and Adjustment Questionnaire is to bridge an empirical gap in the literature surrounding the long-term psychological correlates of childhood domestic sexual environment factors that do not constitute sexual abuse. Throughout the mid-to-late 20th century, psychoanalytic theory, family systems paradigms, and clinical case observations repeatedly asserted that practices such as childhood exposure to parental nudity and prolonged co-sleeping in the parental bed exerted pathogenic influences on child development, predisposing individuals to neuroses, boundary confusion, Oedipal fixations, sexual dysfunction, and personality pathology. However, these assertions frequently lacked systematic empirical testing using representative non-clinical samples.<\/p>\n The SHAQ was designed to address this theoretical gap by offering an objective, standardized retrospective inventory that systematically quantifies:<\/p>\n In research settings, the SHAQ allows investigators to examine whether non-abusive domestic boundary variations correlate with adverse or adaptive adult sexual outcomes. In clinical contexts, such as sex therapy and adult psychodynamic or systemic psychotherapy, the SHAQ serves as a structured intake or assessment instrument. It enables therapists to reconstruct a client’s early psychosexual socialization environment, assess familial sexual openness versus repressiveness, and identify whether current sexual inhibitions, performance anxiety, or relational difficulties stem from restrictive parental messaging rather than domestic boundary practices per se.<\/p>\n The SHAQ captures several interconnected psychological constructs related to family boundary dynamics, psychosexual socialization, and adult sexual functioning. These constructs are structured into distinct analytical subscales:<\/p>\n This construct examines an individual’s recollected frequency of visual exposure to human bodies in non-erotic, domestic settings during early (ages 0\u20135) and middle (ages 6\u201311) childhood. The construct differentiates between:<\/p>\n This construct reflects the frequency with which a child slept in the parental bed during ages 0\u20135 and ages 6\u201311. Historically conceptualized in psychodynamic literature as a potential trigger for Oedipal conflicts or boundary dissolution, the SHAQ measures co-sleeping as a normative continuous variable, allowing empirical investigation into whether physical proximity during sleep relates to later interpersonal attachment, dependency, or sexual functioning.<\/p>\n This construct measures the communicative and affective environment of the family regarding sexuality. It includes:<\/p>\n The SHAQ operationalizes adult psychosexual adjustment across multiple behavioral and psychological indices. Rather than assuming that high frequency of sexual activity alone constitutes adjustment, the construct evaluates personal satisfaction, absence of debilitating sexual guilt or anxiety, self-esteem, absence of sexual dysfunctions, self-efficacy regarding sexual knowledge, and responsible behavioral practices (such as regular contraceptive use).<\/p>\n The conceptual framework of the SHAQ integrates principles from psychodynamic theory, family systems theory, and social learning theory.<\/p>\n Classic psychoanalytic formulations, originating with Sigmund Freud<\/a>, posited that the latency period (approximately ages 6 through puberty) requires a dampening of overt sexual energy to allow cognitive and social consolidation. Traditional analytic theorists argued that seeing parents naked or sleeping in the parental bed during or after the Oedipal transition (ages 3\u20136) could overstimulate the child’s developing psyche, provoke intense Oedipal rivalries or castration anxieties, and inhibit psychosexual maturation. The SHAQ was explicitly designed to test these hypotheses empirically, asking whether childhood exposure to nudity or bed sharing produced the neurotic guilt, sexual dysfunction, or boundary impairments predicted by classical psychodynamic models.<\/p>\n From the perspective of Salvador Minuchin<\/a>’s structural family therapy, healthy family functioning depends on clear, semi-permeable boundaries between the spousal subsystem and the parental\/child subsystem. Diffuse boundaries (enmeshment) are hypothesized to compromise child autonomy. Bed sharing past infancy and excessive parental nudity have sometimes been characterized within clinical family therapy as markers of generational boundary blurring. The SHAQ allows researchers to assess whether these behaviors actually correspond to poor adult adjustment or whether they represent normative, non-pathological variations in cultural and familial physical warmth.<\/p>\n Albert Bandura<\/a>’s social cognitive framework suggests that parental modeling, direct verbal instruction, and emotional feedback regarding bodily functions form children’s internal cognitive schemas about sexuality. In this model, restrictive or anxious parental reactions instill guilt, shame, and cognitive avoidance around sexual stimuli, which persist into adulthood as sexual performance anxiety and relational dissatisfaction. Conversely, positive, relaxed parental communication fosters sexual self-efficacy and psychological well-being. The empirical results reported by Lewis and Janda (1988) strongly supported this social learning framework over purely Freudian paradigms: parental attitudes and comfortable communication were robust predictors of adult sexual adjustment, whereas exposure to nudity and bed sharing showed virtually no adverse effects.<\/p>\n Validation data for the SHAQ stem primarily from the foundational study conducted by Lewis and Janda (1988)<\/a>, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior<\/em>, along with subsequent investigations in psychosexual development.<\/p>\n The items of the SHAQ were developed by clinical psychologists with expertise in human sexuality. Face validity is high: each item directly inquires about concrete, developmentally bounded behaviors (e.g., seeing mother\/father naked during specific age brackets) or explicit attitudes toward sexuality. The developmental differentiation (0\u20135 versus 6\u201311 years) aligns with standard developmental milestones, separating preschool\/early childhood from the school-age\/latency stage.<\/p>\n Construct validity was demonstrated by examining hypothesized intercorrelations among subscales and their predictive relationships with adult adjustment indicators. In their sample of 322 university students (147 males, 175 females), Lewis and Janda (1988) found:<\/p>\n Lewis and Janda (1988) evaluated social desirability response sets using Reynolds’ (1982) short form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale<\/a>. Correlations between the SHAQ subscales and social desirability were uniformly non-significant or negligible, indicating that retrospective reporting of domestic nudity, bed sharing, and parental sexual attitudes was not substantially confounded by a need for social approval.<\/p>\n The reliability of the SHAQ subscales was evaluated through internal consistency analyses (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha) across the primary conceptual domains identified by Lewis and Janda (1988):<\/p>\n No formal test-retest reliability coefficient was published in the original 1988 validation article. However, stability over time for retrospective autobiographical memories of salient domestic practices (such as co-sleeping or parental nudity) is generally considered moderate-to-high in non-clinical adult populations, provided that instructions specifically anchor recall to objective developmental periods.<\/p>\n In the developmental psychometric work conducted by Lewis and Janda (1988), subscale construction was derived theoretically based on family roles (maternal vs. paternal), developmental timing (preschool vs. middle childhood), and behavioral categories (nudity, co-sleeping, attitudes, adjustment). Exploratory principal components analyses conducted on the boundary and environmental items (Items 1\u201319) supported a distinct multi-factor solution:<\/p>\n The adjustment items (Items 20\u201329) encompass distinct facets of sexual well-being (satisfaction, guilt, sexual problem presence, activity preference, sexual knowledge) and are typically treated either as separate criterion indicators or summed into an overall index of sexual adjustment after reverse-scoring negative items.<\/p>\n The Sexual History and Adjustment Questionnaire was developed in 1988 and published in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Sexual Behavior<\/em> by Robin J. Lewis and Louis H. Janda. The instrument is considered an open-access academic measurement tool for non-commercial research and educational applications. No licensing fees are required to administer the scale for non-profit scholarly research. Researchers wishing to reproduce, modify, or use the scale in commercial or clinical diagnostic systems are advised to contact the primary author, Dr. Robin J. Lewis, at Old Dominion University, or seek copyright permission via the publisher (Springer Nature).<\/p>\n Lewis, R. J., & Janda, L. H. (1988). The relationship between adult sexual adjustment and childhood experiences regarding exposure to nudity, sleeping in the parental bed, and parental attitudes toward sexuality. Archives of Sexual Behavior<\/em>, 17(4), 349\u2013362. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/BF01542381<\/a><\/p>\n Reynolds, W. M. (1982). Development of reliable and valid short forms of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology<\/em>, 38(1), 119\u2013125. 3.0.CO;2-I” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/1097-4679(198201)38:1<119::AID-JCLP2270380118>3.0.CO;2-I<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Okami, P., Olmstead, R., & Abramson, P. R. (1997). Sexual coping in adult survivors of child sexual abuse: A survey of adult attachment, sexual motives, and sexual functioning. The Journal of Sex Research<\/em>, 34(4), 339\u2013353. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/00224499709551903<\/a><\/p>\n Okami, P., Weisner, T., & Olmstead, R. (1998). Outcome correlates of childhood exposure to television and cinema violence, nonviolent television, and parental nudity: A 14-year prospective study. The Journal of Sex Research<\/em>, 35(4), 361\u2013386. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/00224499809551954<\/a><\/p>\nKeywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
\nRobin J. Lewis, Ph.D.
\nDepartment of Psychology, Old Dominion University
\nNorfolk, VA 23529-0267
\nEmail: rlewis@odu.edu<\/p>\nPurpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Retrospective Childhood Exposure to Nudity<\/h3>\n
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2. Childhood Co-Sleeping (Parental Bed Sharing)<\/h3>\n
3. Parental Sexual Attitudes and Communication Climate<\/h3>\n
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4. Adult Sexual Adjustment and Self-Appraisal<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
Psychodynamic Formulations of Childhood Sexuality<\/h3>\n
Family Systems and Structural Boundary Theory<\/h3>\n
Social Learning and Cognitive Socialization Theory<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Content and Face Validity<\/h3>\n
Construct and Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity and Response Bias<\/h3>\n
Reliability<\/h2>\n
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Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n