Development of an Uncertainty Scale for Infertile Women.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to develop an uncertainty scale for infertile women.

METHODS

The process included construction of a conceptual framework, generation of 12items, verification of content validity, selection of secondary items, verification of construct validity and extraction of final items. In order to verify the reliability and validity of the preliminary instrument, data were collected from 50 infertile women in an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinic. Data were analyzed by item analysis, Varimax factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha.

RESULTS

There were 10 items in the final instrument categorized into 2 factors labeled as "personal (6 items)" and "relational (4 items)" The total variance explained was 73.36%. The instrument was shown to have good reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of .899.

CONCLUSION

Validity and reliability of the scale were confirmed in this study showing its utility to measure uncertainty for infertile women. The instrument can help understand sterility and accurately measure uncertainty for infertile women. The instrument can also be used to evaluate nursing interventions designed for mitigating uncertainty for infertile women.