The purpose of this research was to validate the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women on the Italian women population. The study also presented an evaluation of its psychometric properties.

The sample was made up of 1305 Italian women aged between 18 and 74 yrs. An Exploratory Factorial Analysis (EFA) was performed with the method of principal components and OBLIMIN rotation. Internal consistency was calculated by means of Cronbach alpha coefficients for each factor.

On the basis of the sree-test 4 factors have been considered that explain 49% of the total variance: Sexuality of the couple (F1); Self-eroticism (F2); Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction (F3); Anal sexuality (F4). F1 and F2 (r= .25), F1 and F4 (r= .28), and F2 and F4 (r= .23) result weakly correlated. Cronbach alpha results of .95 for F1, of .85 for F2, of .73 for F3, and of .80 for F4, attesting a good degree of homogeneity among the items.

This research provided a validation of BISF-W as an instrument for evaluating sexual function in Italian women. Whereas previous American researches have proposed factors or dimensions connected to a physiological model of the cycle of sexual response, such as Desire, Excitement, Orgasm, Activity, Difficulty, Satisfaction (Mazer et al., 2000), the 4 factors that emerged in this work reflect a more psychological (cognitive-behavioural) model, that separates self-erotic activities and those carried out in a couple.