Development and psychometric evaluation of the Premarital Sexual Behavior Assessment Scale for Young Women (PSAS-YW): an exploratory mixed method study

BACKGROUND: Premarital sexual behaviors are important issue for women’s health. The present study was designed to develop and examine the psychometric properties of a scale in order to identify young women who are at greater risk of premarital sexual behavior. METHOD: This was an exploratory mixed method investigation. Indeed, the study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, qualitative methods (focus group discussion and individual interview) were applied to generate items and develop the questionnaire. In the second phase, psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of the questionnaire were assessed. RESULTS: In the first phase an item pool containing 53 statements related to premarital sexual behavior was generated. In the second phase item reduction was applied and the final version of the questionnaire containing 26 items was developed. The psychometric properties of this final version were assessed and the results showed that the instrument has a good structure, and reliability. The results from exploratory factory analysis indicated a 5-factor solution for the instrument that jointly accounted for the 57.4% of variance observed. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the instrument was found to be 0.87. CONCLUSION: This study provided a valid and reliable scale to identify premarital sexual behavior in young women. Assessment of premarital sexual behavior might help to improve women’s sexual abstinence.