Background

Communication is a crucial part of sexuality. Communication ability has been linked to ability to participate in consent-related discussions, sexual health and safety, sexual self-esteem and self-efficacy, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. It therefore makes sense that people with acquired communication impairments would experience changes to their sexual wellbeing as a result of the communication impairment. Additionally, healthcare clinicians may perceive the communication impairment as reducing the client's ability to discuss sexuality and sexual health. This may make sexual wellness even more difficult to access for people with acquired communication impairments. Therefore, this scoping review will be undertaken to better understand the scope of the literature relating acquired communication impairments to sexuality and how these impacts are discussed in the literature.

Methods

We will use Arksey and O'Malley (2005) framework for a scoping review. We will search CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus. No date limits will be placed on the search. Additional hand searches of reference lists will be conducted. Data will be extracted relating to the context of the publication, disorder area and communication impairment studied, how communication was discussed in the article, explicitly stated effects of communication impairment on intimacy/sexuality, effects of communication impairment on ability to participate in the study, and any accommodations made for people with communication difficulties. Quantitative data will be explored with descriptive statistics, and qualitative data will be analyzed using a meta-qualitative approach with latent content analysis to interpret meaning and explore themes.

The full search strategy and methods are available in the PDF attached.

Scoping Review Protocol.docx.pdf