Development and psychometric assessment of the sexual health education necessity scale: An exploratory mixed method study

Sexual health education is a controversial issue within the Iranian context. Thus, the present study was conducted to explore the necessity of sex education among young single women and develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Sexual Health Education Necessity Scale.

This was an exploratory mixed method study. Young single women (51 women in the first phase and 110 women in the second phase of the study) aged 18-34 years were recruited in the study. In the first phase, qualitative methods were applied to generate items. In the second phase, psychometric properties, such as face, content, and construct validity, and reliability of the Sexual Health Education Necessity Scale were evaluated. In the first phase, an item pool was developed that included 17 statements related to sexual health education necessity. In the second phase, item reduction was applied using exploratory factor analysis and the final version of the questionnaire containing 9 items was developed.  Also, content, face, and construct validity were assessed. Moreover, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and test-retest were calculated to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire. SPSS software (version 21) was used for data analysis and p value less than 0.05 was considered as significant.

In the qualitative phase, 4 key themes emerged regarding sex education, which included the effects of sex education, principles of sex education, content of sex education, and organizations responsible for sex education. An item pool containing 17 statements was generated and used for psychometric evaluation. The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed a 2-factor solution for the scale, which collectively accounted for the 56.04% of the variance. Final CVR and CVI were found to be 0.96 and 0.97, respectively. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and test-retest of the instrument was found to be 0.78 and 0.80, respectively.

Sexual Health Education Necessity Scale can be used for exploring dominant beliefs that may be obstacles for providing sex education in conservative societies; therefore, correcting these beliefs could help to design an appropriate sexual health education program.