AI Qualitative Analysis: Sexual Satisfaction Study

According to the PLOS One article (Toghiyani et al., 2026) PLOS One, three psychosocial categories shape sexual satisfaction among Iranian newlyweds: premarital sexual norms, sexual schemas, and sexual agency and control.

• The PLOS One study interviewed 31 participants in 36 semi-structured interviews and was published on August 13, 2026.
• The PLOS One authors extracted 720 inferential codes and consolidated them into 234 codes, producing three main thematic categories in March–August 2026 analysis.
• In the PLOS One sample the mean age was 29.5 years (SD 5.32) for women and 32.75 years (SD 5.13) for men, and data collection continued until saturation as reported by the authors.

The PLOS One study (Toghiyani et al., 2026) used an inductive qualitative content analysis of 36 face-to-face interviews with 31 newly married, sexually active Persian-speaking adults in Isfahan, Iran, following COREQ guidelines.

The PLOS One authors recorded interviews between 50 and 85 minutes, transcribed audio verbatim, and used Graneheim and Lundman’s method to code meaning units into 720 inferential codes that were merged to 234 codes and then abstracted into three categories.

The PLOS One research team recruited participants from premarital education centers and health centers to purposively sample diversity in age, education, employment, and marriage duration.

For qualitative researchers, the PLOS One study (Toghiyani et al., 2026) shows that culturally embedded norms produce layered codes and that mixed individual-plus-dyadic interviews reveal both private and negotiated accounts.

The PLOS One authors highlight that taboo and virginity norms constrained disclosure, which suggests that researchers should plan interviewer gender, private interviews, and participant validation steps as part of study design.

The PLOS One team reported iterative coding and external expert review to strengthen trustworthiness, which researchers can replicate by keeping an audit trail and performing member checks.

The PLOS One study (Toghiyani et al., 2026) demonstrates that premarital norms, sexual schemas, and sexual agency interact to shape sexual satisfaction and that careful, transparent qualitative methods are required to surface these dynamics.

Using AI-enabled qualitative research platforms can reproduce the PLOS One team’s trustworthiness steps while compressing the coding workload from hundreds of preliminary codes into researcher-reviewed themes.

If you want to test an AI-assisted pipeline on interview transcripts or survey text, Try Evidano for free to upload data, generate thematic analyses, and preserve audit trails.