What do I do to avoid sexually transmitted diseases? A scale development study: behavioral scale for protection from sexually transmitted diseases

Abstract

The authors’ aim is to develop and confirm a reliable and valid measurement tool that can measure women’s behavior to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. The study data were collected from adult women aged 18–47 years (n = 505). Explanatory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to the STD scale consisting of 44 items in a 5-point Likert style. According to the results of EFA, 21 items were defined in the scale. The KMO value of the scale is 90.6%. In the study, the varimax rotation method was used to bring the factors together with the related items. As a result of varimax rotation, two factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were found in the scale. The overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.911, 0.941 for the first subdimension and 0.889 for the second subdimension. The validity and reliability of this study have been proven according to the results of explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).