Psychometric Analysis of Iron-Deficiency Anemia Prevention Scale among Afghan Children

Prevalence of iron deficiency among children under five years old in Afghanistan is about 44.2%. The current study was aimed at the psychometric analysis of iron-deficiency anemia prevention scale among a sample of mothers who had female primary school children in Kabul, Afghanistan.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Three hundred mothers who had female elementary school children, were randomly selected to participate voluntarily in the study. The iron-deficiency anemia prevention scale was developed about face validity, reliability (internal consistency) and construct validity. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was carried out to determine the factorial structure and to explaining the variance of the variables.

The initial questionnaire consisted of 50 items and nine items were eliminated in the psychometric process scale. All the studied factors in analyzing exploratory factor with factorial loadings of more than 0.4 were confirmed. In explanatory factor analysis, the results of the KMO test were calculated at 0.800. Totally, four personality variables described 58.626% of the assumed model changes. The Cronbach’s alpha for the measured constructs including attitude, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived self-efficacy, behavior, knowledge of disease symptoms, and knowledge of preventive behaviors ranged from 0.72 to 0.93.

The current study provides some support to the internal validity and reliability of the iron-deficiency anemia prevention scale among mothers who had female primary school children in Afghanistan. This scale can be beneficial to planning health programs based on the promotion of iron- deficiency anemia prevention among elementary school girls by their mothers in Afghanistan and other similar cultural settings.