Gavin Daker-White

A cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 216 men and 191 women attending a genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic was undertaken to explore the relationship between sexual symptoms and quality of...

Sixty-seven English language articles were obtained for the review, the majority of which (44, 65.7%) had US origins. Broadly, the main issues covered in the literature were the under-utilization of services by minority ethnic groups; the prevalence of dementia in different ethnic groups; the experience of care giving in different racial groups and language as a factor in cognitive assessment. Although it has been argued that the instruments used to assess cognitive function are culturally biased, the available published evidence would seem to suggest that the fundamental issue is language ability, rather than minority group membership per se . Studies into the care giving experience amongst different ethnic or racial groups suffer from theoretical and methodological weaknesses. Studies of help-seeking among various ethnic groups in the US have found that many do not prioritize dementia as a health problem in the face of more pressing concerns. There was little consensus amongst the articles about whether services should be provided specifically for different ethnic groups, reflecting a lack of evidence concerning the efficacy of different models of service provision.

This paper examines the published reliability and validity of non-disease specific, self-report measures of sexual function. Relevant papers were found in a search of the Embaseelectronic...