Designing and validation of a reproductive health need assessment tool for women experienced domestic violence

BACKGROUND: Violence as a serious health problem and one of the main manifestations of gender inequality brings about adverse health effects for women. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to recognize the reproductive health status of women subjected to violence in order to provide the health services they need. Considering that one of the ways to determine reproductive health status is the use of valid questionnaires in this field, this study aimed to determine the components of reproductive health in domestic violated women and design a valid and reliable assessment tool. METHODS: The present study was conducted based on a mixed-method design. The first part of the study (qualitative section) was conducted based on conventional content analysis. In this part, unstructured in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 violated women and 9 experts. In the next stage, the item pool was formed and the Reproductive Health Needs of Violated Women Scale was designed based on the review of the literature and the results of the qualitative section with 39 items using the Waltz approach. For psychometric assessment of the above instrument, face and content validity, item analysis, and construct validity were examined using exploratory factor analysis. RESULTS: Based on the results of factor analysis, the four following factors were extracted with a total variance of 47.62: "men's participation", "self-care", "support and health services", as well as "sexual and marital relationships. The internal consistency of the instrument was calculated at α = 0.70–0.89 and α = 0.94 for different constructs and the whole instrument, respectively. Moreover, intra-cluster correlation coefficients were obtained at ICC = 0.96–0.99 and ICC = 0.98 for constructs and the whole instruments, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results of the current study, the present scale is a tool that specifically assesses the reproductive health needs of violated women and has appropriate validity and reliability. The results of the assessment using the aforementioned instruments can be of great help in promoting the reproductive health of women subjected to violence.