Turkish validity and reliability of Reproductive Autonomy Scale

ABSTRACT TURKISH VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE REPRODUCTIVE AUTONOMY SCALE Aim: This study was conducted to examine the validity and reliability of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale in Turkish. Materials and Methods: The sample of the methodological study included 300 women who applied to the Maternity and Child Diseases Hospital polyclinics, agreed to participate in the study and met the inclusion criteria. Data were collected face-to-face between March 11 and August 27, 2024, using the personalin formation form, the Reproductive Autonomy Scale (RAS), and the "Protection from Unwanted Pregnancy" sub-dimension of the Scale for Determining Married Women's Reproductive Health Protective Attitudes (USPH). After ensuring the language equivalence and content validity of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach'salphacoefficient, andcorrelationanalysis test wereused in theanalysis of the data. Results: The translation-back translation technique was used for the language equivalence of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale. The Turkish language equivalence of the scale was provided, and content validity was ensured by editing it in line with expert opinions. According to the exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale had three sub-dimensions as in the original Reproductive Autonomy Scale. The factor loadings of the scale ranged between 0.40 and 0.91 and the total variance explained was 63.260%. Instructural equation modeling, it was determined that the fit index values obtained for the scale were x2/SD 2.26, NFI 0.92, CFI 0.95, TLI 0.94, RMSEA 0.065 and SRMR 0.067 and were acceptable. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale was 0.81, 0.71 for the "Decision Making" sub-dimension, 0.91 for the "Freedom from Coercion" sub-dimension and 0.77 for the "Communication" sub-dimension. It was determined that the score correlations of the items in the scale were more than 0.40.It was found that the differences between the lower and upper 27% mean scores of the scale and its sub-dimensions were statistically significant. (p<0.05). The mean score of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale was 3.09±0.35. Conclusion: The Turkish version of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale was found to be a valid and reliable measurement tool. It is recommended that health professionals use the Reproductive Autonomy Scale in other populations and in further research. Keywords: Reproductive autonomy, reliability, validity, measurement tool, turkish form.