ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Descriptive & Survey Study

Authors

Amini   A. (1)
Kazemnejad   A. (*)
Gholami Fesharaki   M. (1)






(*) Department of Biostatistics, Medical Sciences Faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
(1) Department of Biostatistics, Medical Sciences Faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Correspondence

Address: Medical Sciences Faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Nasr Bridge, Jalal Al Ahmad Street, Tehran, Iran. Postal Code: 331-14115
Phone: +98 (21) 82883875
Fax: -
kazem_an@modares.ac.ir

Article History

Received:  April  8, 2017
Accepted:  September 3, 2017
ePublished:  June 3, 2018

BRIEF TEXT


… [1]. Marriage adjusts the economic needs and social-cultural relationships and responds to sexual-emotional needs of human [2]. Knowledge, attitude, and expectation are among the most important factors affecting the successful marriage [3-5].

Many researcher-made questionnaires on attitude to marriage [2], pre-marriage knowledge and attitude [6], marriage expectations [7-9] were explained. Iranian researchers used a researcher-made questionnaire on knowledge and attitude to marriage [10], marriage expectation [5], and attitude to marriage [11-23].

The simultaneous evaluation of the factors affecting the successful marriage is the most important step in developing the educational programs and taking the appropriate policies in using the current facilities. Although the above-mentioned questionnaires have been effective in the separate evaluation of mentioned criteria before marriage, they could not present a complete evaluation. The present study aimed at investigating, designing, and standardizing the questionnaire of marriage knowledge, attitude, and expectation.

This study is descriptive-exploratory and survey-designing.

This study was conducted on all Tehran, Iran, police personnel in the first six months of 2014.

The number of samples in this study, based on the formula presented by Barbara et al. [14], was 360 subjects (10 samples per one question). Finally, by calculating the loss probability of 10%, 396 subjects were selected by two-stage cluster sampling.

In this study, the researcher-made questionnaire of knowledge, attitude, and expectation toward marriage was used. After searching the similar studies and writing the questions of this study, 40 questions with 4-option scale were designed. The content validity of the designed questions was studied by the opinions of experts (N=11), two-stage Delphi method, the content validity ratio, and content validity index (equations 1 &2) [15]. After selecting the questions in the content validity step, the exploratory factor analysis was used to study the construct validity and determine the questionnaire items. In this analysis, the principal component method with promax rotation was used for studying the degree of compatibility (adaptation) and naming the extracted factors. Finally, the Cronbach’s alpha index was used to measure and confirm the questionnaire reliability. All participants in this research project were included in the study, with their consent, after receiving the data related to motivation for implementing the project. The questionnaires had no name and the data were generally analyzed. In this study, the descriptive statistic methods were used for evaluating the demographic characteristics. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 22 software.

By specifying the content validity of questions, one question with CRV less than 0.59 (based on the opinions of 11 experts) and three questions with CVI less than 0.79 were removed. At this step, the questionnaire items were reduced to 36 items. Based on the conducted calculations, the content validity ratio and content validity index of the questionnaire were obtained as 0.91 and 0.89 respectively. By using all observations (N=366), the exploratory factor analysis led to identifying three factors by using Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index with 0.817 value and removing five questions. Thus, the final number of questions was 31. By placing these three factors to orthogonal promax rotation, each factor was named and estimated by likelihood method. Based on the factor loads and content of questions, the factors were named as attitude (six questions), negative expectation (13 questions), and knowledge (12 questions). In general, the three above-mentioned factors explained 41% of the questionnaire total variance, 14% to expectation, and 20% to knowledge. The mean score of positive attitude was 47.96±7.51, positive expectation from marriage was 26.09±5.01 and marriage knowledge was 28.01±4.75 (Tbale 1). By using the internal consistency method, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the total questionnaire was 0.823 and for attitude to marriage, marriage expectation, and knowledge was respectively 0.81, 0.81, and 0.84 indicating the accuracy, repeatability, and favorable reliability of this study.

In a study by Hazaveyi et al., the researcher-made questionnaires of knowledge and attitude to health issues by couples have been used separately. In this study, unlike the present study, only the qualitative method has been used to study the content validity and other evaluation methods of questionnaire validity have not investigated [10]. In the study of Nilforushan et al., the attitude to marriage has been studied in single students. The content validity of this study has been studied only through the qualitative method and the reliability has been evaluated by re-test and internal consistency methods [12]. Abdoljabbar et al. in their study on attitude to marriage in some bachelor students report the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.87. In this study, only the face validity is used to evaluate the questionnaire validity [16]. Mahamed et al. in their study on some single students referring to the medical-health center in line with this study use a researcher-made questionnaire for evaluating the knowledge and attitude. In this study, the questionnaire reliability has been reported as 0.83 by using the Cronbach’s alpha method. Although the questionnaire validity has been studied by using the content validity, its accuracy has been not reported [17]. Ramezani et al. have used their researcher-made questionnaire to investigate the knowledge and attitude of couples before marriage [18]. Although the content validity of this tool has been not confirmed, its reliability has been not reported [18]. Mahmoodabad et al. in a study investigate the knowledge and attitude of couples before marriage. The validity of the used researcher-made questionnaire is measured by the content validity and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this tool is obtained as 0.71 [19]. In general, although in the conducted studies, the validity and reliability are confirmed, unlike this study, the quantitative content validity was not studied in any of them. In fact, the researcher can use the quantitative content method to have more realistic and accurate judgment on measuring the questionnaire validity and this was one of the strengths of the present study.

It is suggested to conduct another similar study in future by using the confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the structure of the questionnaire factors.

The most limitation of this study was selecting the Tehran police personnel as the statistical population because it reduced the possibility of generalizing the obtained findings in this study to all police personnel in the country. In addition, the possibility of answers’ bias was another limitation of this study.

The present study is a reliable, valid, and accurate tool that can be used simultaneously for measuring three factors of marriage knowledge, attitude to marriage, and marriage expectation.

The authors of this study would like to appreciate the head and personnel of the Department of Health, Rescue and Treatment of I.r.Iran Police Force, Applied Research Center for their sincere cooperation in this study.

This study was derived from a project plan entitled “A study on marriage knowledge, attitude to marriage, marriage expectation, and tendency to childbearing among the police personnel”.

No case was reported.

The financial source of this study was the Department of Health, Rescue And Treatment of I.r.Iran Police Force, Applied Research Center.

TABLES and CHARTS

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CITIATION LINKS

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