The Over 45s Adult Sexuality and Intimacy Scale: A new approach to understanding and measuring sexuality in mid and later life

The five publications comprising this thesis interlink to produce a novel approach to conceptualising the experience of sexuality and related factors for heterosexual adults in mid and later life, and a validated measurement scale that aligns with this new approach (the Over 45s Adult Sexuality and Intimacy Scale; “The OASIS”). This work creates new opportunities to understand the experience of sexuality for heterosexual adults in mid and later life that better reflect the sexual priorities of this cohort, and creates new avenues to examine the experience of sexuality for this cohort beyond measures of sexual functioning and sexual activity frequency.