Use of sexual stimuli in research and clinical settings: expert opinion and recommendations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Sexual stimuli, such as sexual videos, images, and narratives describing sexual interactions, are one of many tools used by clinicians and researchers to elicit or augment sexual response. Given the wide variability within sexual stimuli and their effects on sexual response, we provide guidance on when and how to use sexual stimuli, selecting sexual stimuli, and standardizing the use and reporting of sexual stimuli in research and clinical practice. Aim: This expert opinion review article discusses standard operating procedures when using sexual stimuli in clinical and research applications, addressing 3 broad areas: settings in which sexual stimuli are used, characteristics and contexts of the stimuli, and practical and ethical considerations when using the stimuli. Methods: This article is based on an expert opinion review of the sexual psychophysiology literature. Results: First, we discuss the settings in which sexual stimuli are typically used and evaluate the ecological validity of each setting. Second, we review the types of sexual stimuli used in sexual response research, including physical characteristics, depicted sexual activity, and context, and the impacts of these characteristics on sexual response. Last, we discuss the practical and ethical considerations that come with the choice and use of sexual stimuli in clinical and research settings. We address potential limitations of certain sexual stimuli, including practical and ethical considerations such as participant vs experimenter choice, diversity and representation, and proper sourcing of sexual stimuli for use in clinical and research applications. Discussions on the future applications of sexual stimuli, such as the use of virtual reality, and ethical considerations in terms of user-generated Internet sexual stimuli are also explored. Conclusion: We provide an expert opinion review of the literature regarding use of sexual stimuli for clinical and research applications and offer best use practices and recommendations.
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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 | 0.157 | 0.508 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.005 |
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".