SEXUAL COMPATIBILITY AND MARITAL SATISFACTION AMONG MARRIED COUPLES IN MALAYSIA: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF SEXUAL SATISFACTION

The 13th Next-Generation Global Workshop第13回次世代グローバルワークショップテーマ: New Risks and Resilience in Asian Societies and the World 日程: 21-23 November, 2020 開催場所: ベトナム社会科学院(ハノイ)/Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences(No. 1 Lieu Giai street, Ba Dinh, Hanoi, Vietnam) ※Due to the COVID-19, the workshop will be held at ONLINE for overseas participants(not from Vietnam)/ONSITE for Vietnamese participants.The sample consisted of 255 married couples (Mage=31.17; SDage=11.07; 56.5% females; 87.8% Chinese, 7.5% Indian, 3.5% Malays and 1.2% other ethnicities) recruited online through the convenience sampling method. The married couples completed a self-administered online questionnaire that included the ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale (EMS; Fowers & Olson, 1993), the Index of Sexual Satisfaction (ISS; Hudson, 1998), and the Hurlbert Index of Sexual Compatibility (HISC; Hurlbert et al., 1993).Significant positive relationships were found between marital satisfaction, sexual compatibility (r= .686, p< .001) and sexual satisfaction (r= .711, p< .001). Meanwhile, the findings of a mediation analysis showed that sexual satisfaction mediated the direct association between sexual compatibility and marital satisfaction. The results suggested that the married couples who were sexually compatible tended to be more satisfied with their sexual relationships which in turn led to greater marital satisfaction for them.As a conclusion, the findings from this research highlighted the importance of the sexual aspects in determining a satisfactory married life among couples in Malaysia. The results also served as a vital input for designing couple counselling interventions among practitioners in health psychology