Dyspareunia in their own words: A comprehensive qualitative description of endometriosis-associated sexual pain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Dyspareunia is a classic symptom of endometriosis but is neglected in research and clinical contexts. This study explored the experience of this endometriosis-associated sexual pain. Methods This was a qualitative descriptive study that included people who had experienced endometriosis-associated dyspareunia alone or with a partner. Data collection involved semi- structured interviews with a female researcher that began with an open-ended question about dyspareunia and included interview prompts related to the nature of sexual pain. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed for themes. Results 17 participants completed interviews. The mean participant age was 33.3 (SD=7.2) and most participants identified as white (82%), were college-educated (71%), identified as heterosexual (65%), and were partnered (59%). Location, onset, and character emerged as important, interrelated features of endometriosis-associated dyspareunia, as did severity and impact. Dyspareunia occurred at the vaginal opening (n=7) and in the abdomen/pelvis (n=13). Pain at the vaginal opening began with initial penetration and had pulling, burning and stinging qualities. Pain in the pelvis was typically experienced with deep penetration or in certain position and was described as sharp, stabbing and/or cramping. Dyspareunia ranged from mild to severe, and for some participants had a marked psychosocial impact. Conclusions Dyspareunia is a heterogeneous symptom of endometriosis that ranges in severity and impact. Disaggregating dyspareunia into superficial and deep types may better reflect the etiologies of this pain, thereby improving outcome measurement in intervention studies and clinical care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".