A critical aspect of sexual functioning is sexual distress, or the extent to which a person experiences negative feelings surrounding sexual activity, such as worry, frustration, or concern. While sexual distress is considered a necessary part of the diagnostic criteria for sexual dysfunction, current measures for sexual dysfunction largely emphasize sexual impairments and often ignore how individuals feel about sexual function concerns.

The Sexual Distress Scale (SDS) has previously been used to measure sexual distress; however, it also includes items that are more closely related to sexual satisfaction and as a result make it difficult to create a clinical cut-off score for sexual dysfunction.

This study aims to increase the usability of a newly formed questionnaire, the SDS-SF, by validating its use in a sample of people with and without sexual concerns, and to determine an accurate clinical cut-off score to be used by sexual health clinicians and researchers.