Psychometric evaluation of a questionnaire for measuring factors related to mental health of women in an earthquake

Abstract

The current study was performed with the aim of the psychometric evaluation of a questionnaire for measuring factors related to women's mental health in an earthquake. This descriptive instrumental study was carried out on a population of 378 women with an earthquake experience in Kerman Province, Iran, in 2017-2018. The formal validity, content validity, criterion validity, factor analysis, and reliability of the questionnaire were measured using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Moreover, descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used to report data. In the content validity stage, 34out of 85 items of the questionnaire were eliminated. In the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) stage, 2 items out of the remaining 51 items were removed due to weak factor loading and 49 items were defined in 6 factors. The convergent and divergent validities of the questionnaire were confirmed in relation to the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) (r = -0.23; P = .030) and World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF left-to-right mark(WHOQOL-BREF) (r = 0.32;P = .001). Using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, the reliability of the questionnaireleft-to-right markwas obtained to be 0.91. The reliability and validity of the study questionnaire were at an appropriate level, and thus, it can be used to perform extensive surveys among women who have left-to-right markexperienced earthquake.