Design and Psychometric Evaluation of an Emotional Support Scale for Cervical Cancer Screening in Iranian Women

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The cervical cancer screening reduces the incidence and mortality rates of women with cervical cancer. Emotional support is one of factors affecting this screening. This study aims to design an emotional support scale for cervical cancer screening and evaluate its psychometric properties in Iranian women. Methods: In this methodological study, after reviewing the literature and conducting interviews with 20 women of reproductive age, 33 items were first formulated, which was later reduced to 9 items using the Delphi method. During the face and content validity assessment of the initial version, the number of items was reduced to 8. The construct validity was performed with the participation of 630 women with a mean age of 42.12±9.78 years, who were selected by a convenience sampling method. To analyze the data, SPSS version 24 and AMOS version 24 were used. Results: The mean content validity index, intracluster correlation coefficient, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were obtained 0.92, 0.93 and 0.79, respectively, indicating the acceptable validity and reliability of the scale. By the exploratory factor analysis, two factors of positive effects and negative effects of emotional support for cervical cancer screening were identified, which together explained 61.86% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-factor solution of the designed scale. Conclusion: The designed emotional support scale has good psychometric properties. It can be used for assessing the emotional support for cervical cancer screening in women of reproductive age.

Keywords

• cervical cancer
• screening
• psychometrics
• emotional support