Menstrual poverty scale: reliability and validity study

ABSTRACT

The tendency toward poverty in the globalizing world significantly affects women. Unlike men, women have mandatory expenses every month. Especially poor women have difficulty in accessing to the hygienic products they need during the menstrual period. That is why, this study aims to develop a measurement tool that can effectively and widely assess women’s menstrual poverty. This study is a methodological study that evaluates the psychometric properties of the scale. The study included 420 women living in a middle-income province in the north of Türkiye between April – July, 2023. The data were collected using the Menstrual Poverty Scale, and the items on the scale were developed based on a review of existing literature and expert opinions (CVI = 0.85–0.95). The sample was divided into two parts. It was made exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Before conducting the study, an ethics committee decision and informed consent of the women were obtained. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS 23 and AMOS 23 programs. The EFA revealed a structure consisting of 13 items and four factors. The four factors considered were as follows; access to hygiene products, quality of life, embarrassment, and receiving information, and education about menstruation. The item factor loadings varied from 0.46 to 0.91. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was determined to be 0.69. The corrected item-total correlations for the scale items ranged from 0.62 to 0.84. According to the confirmatory factor analysis, the structural equation modeling results of the Menstrual Poverty Scale were found to be meaningful (p = .000; RMSEA 0.64; CMIN/Df 1.70). It is suggested to conduct validity and reliability studies in different cultures by applying the scale to women from different cultural backgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Access
• menstruation
• poverty
• scale
• validity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

ÖÖY, AH and İAA conceptualized the study, participated in the study design, and revised the manuscript. ÖÖY and AH wrote the manuscript and conducted the statistical analysis. ÖÖY and AH collected the data or provided the revised advice. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.