PURPOSE: to identify if there is a difference in the prevalence of sexual dysfunction and in the sexual domain scores between a group of women attended at a public service and a group attended at a private service, and to investigate if there is an association between sexual dysfunction, family income and educational status. METHODS: transversal study including 201 sexually active women aged from 18 to 45 years, 90 of them from a public service and 111 from private services. We evaluated age, marital status, use of hormonal contraception, income and educational status, and all women were submitted to the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), an instrument for the evaluation of their sexuality. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 15.0, was used for statistical analysis. The χ2 test was applied for categorical variables and the Student's t-test to independent samples. RESULTS: there was no significant difference regarding the prevalence of sexual dysfunction between groups (public versus private) (20 and 23.4%, p=0.5), or concerning the domain scores, desire (3.9±1.3 and 3.8±1.0, p=0.6), sexual arousal (4.5±0.8 and 4.4±0.9, p=0.5), lubrication (5.2±1.2 and 5.0±0.9, p=0.1), orgasm (5.0±1.2 and 4.9±1.1, p=0.5), satisfaction (5.2±1.2 and 5.1±1.0, p=0.9), and pain (5.3±1.1 and 5.2±1.0, p=0.8). Sexual dysfunction was detected in 28% of the women with income between two and four minimum wages, in 17.5% of those with an income of five wages or more, and in 14.3% among those with an income of one wage or less (p=0,1). The dysfunction occurred in 30.2% of women with elementary education, in 24.2% of those with high school education and in 13.4% of those with higher education (p=0.09). CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant difference in the prevalence of sexual dysfunction or in the sexual domain scores between groups, nor was there an association with income or education status.
Sexual dysfunction, physiological; Coitus; Sexual behavior; Socioeconomic factors; Prevalence
