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Development and psychometric evaluation of the Sexual Health Assessment Tool for Infertile Women (SEHAT-IW)

  • Gynecologic Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable tool for evaluation of sexual health assessment in infertile women.

Methods

This was a mixed exploratory study consisting of two phases. At phase one, we reviewed the existing instruments and interviewed 20 infertile women to generate an item pool. Then, the research team examined items and invited a panel of experts (n = 15) and a group of infertile women (n = 10) to review the items to establish content and face validity. Accordingly, the provisional version of the questionnaire containing 62 items was provided. At phase two, a cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the questionnaire. The structural validity was examined by performing exploratory factor analysis. Internal consistency was estimated by the Cornbach’s alpha coefficient and test–retest analysis was performed to assess stability.

Results

The final questionnaire consisted of 45 items and a total of 372 infertile women completed the questionnaire. The mean age of women was 30.8 (SD 6.0) years and this was 5.6 (SD 4.2) for duration of infertility. The results obtained from exploratory factor analysis indicated a five-factor solution for the questionnaire that jointly explained 51.39% of variance observed. At this stage, 15 items were deleted due to low factor loading. The analysis of internal consistency and stability yielded satisfactory results (Cronbach alpha: 0.93, ICC 0.97, respectively). Further analysis indicated that lower sexual health in infertile women was associated with education (OR for primary education 2.61, 95% CI 1.44–4.76, P = 0.002) and being housewife (OR 2.35, 95% CI 1.15–4.83, P = 0.01).

Conclusion

The findings showed that the Sexual Health Assessment Tool for Infertile Women (SEHAT-IW) is a reliable and valid instrument to assess infertile women’s sexual health.

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Data availability

The data sets generated and analyzed during this study are not publicly presented because of a desire to protect the participants’ anonymity; they are, however, available from the corresponding author on advisable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study is part of a Ph.D. dissertation approved by the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. The authors would like to acknowledge all the participants (infertile women) who took part in this study.

Funding

None.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Reproductive Health and Midwifery, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Zahra Daneshfar & Shahideh Jahanian Sadatmahalleh

  2. Department of Biostatistics, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Anoshiravan Kazemnejad

  3. Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Fazlollah Ahmadi

Authors
  1. Zahra Daneshfar
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  2. Shahideh Jahanian Sadatmahalleh
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  3. Anoshiravan Kazemnejad
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  4. Fazlollah Ahmadi
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Contributions

SHJ involved in the study design, analysis, and interpretation of data and critically revised the final manuscript. ZD collected the data and drafted the manuscript. AK and FA contributed to the statistics and critically revised the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shahideh Jahanian Sadatmahalleh.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Tarbiat Modares University (IR.TMU.REC.1396.659). The present study only involved persons who gave their informed consent. For this, verbal informed consent was obtained from all participants before the start of the study, and all members of the participants completed informed written consent after being informed about the aims of the research. The designed questionnaire was distributed among the participants, while they remained anonymous; there was no private information that could enable the association of any answers with any of the persons in the present study. To protect the rights and interests of all participants, no records of consent by name were kept. Each completed instrument was given to the research fellow on the same day of data collection.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Not applicable.

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Daneshfar, Z., Sadatmahalleh, S.J., Kazemnejad, A. et al. Development and psychometric evaluation of the Sexual Health Assessment Tool for Infertile Women (SEHAT-IW). Arch Gynecol Obstet 303, 589–596 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-020-05832-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-020-05832-8

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