The dual control model of human sexual behavior proposes that sexual responses involve an interaction between sexual excitatory and sexual inhibitory systems. The Sexual Inhibition/Sexual Excitation Scales (SIS/SES; Janssen, Vorst, Finn, & Bancroft, 2002) as well as its short form (SIS/SES-SF; Carpenter, Janssen, Graham, Vorst, & Wicherts, 2011) assess individual propensities to become sexually excited and sexually inhibited. The present study utilized a dataset of 2221 German-speaking adults (n = 1214 women and n = 987 men) to examine the psychometric properties of the German version of the SIS/SES-SF. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the three factors suggested in the original version can be generally replicated within the current study. Analyses of measurement invariance for gender revealed that the general three-factor structure as well as factor loadings can be regarded as equal for men and women. However, scalar invariance could not be fully obtained, indicating that the intercepts of some items were different for men and women. Taken together, the results of the presents study provide further evidence for the psychometric properties of the German version of the SIS/SES-SF.
Keywords: Gender differences; SIS/SES-SF; Sexual behavior; Sexual excitation; Sexual inhibition.