Focusing on Participants

Abstract

This article presents a model developed and assessed by a women's health research team to enhance sensitivity and increase readability of a survey to be used with community‐based women. The survey consisted of quantitative measures of AIDS‐related attitudes and behaviors, developed and used with traditional‐aged college populations, and included questions of a highly personal nature. In Study 1, 30 women with English reading levels of third grade and above from two targeted community populations completed a survey in two waves of focus groups and gave feedback about readability, length, format, content, emotional responses, truthfulness in responding, and opinions about the research. Problem areas and changes that made the survey more readable, understandable, emotionally sensitive, and effective are reviewed. In Study 2, pre‐ and postmodification versions of nine scales are compared in 430 traditional‐aged college women (pre) and 793 community‐based women (post), the latter broken into subsamples for more refined comparisons. Results of five psychometric analyses demonstrate that psychometric integrity does not have to be hurt by such changes. In addition, this process illustrates how researchers can gain a better understanding of participants and their reactions to the research process through qualitative research methods.

Sexual Assertiveness Scale (SAS) for women: Development and validation.

“…We reworded each of the 18 items in the SAS developed in Study 1 by using the following criteria: (a) The main clause of the sentence was first, with any conditional clause following (e.g., “I ask my partner to touch my genitals if I want to”); (b) The main clause of each item was worded in the present tense (see previous example); (c) Items were made gender neutral to avoid heterosexist bias (e.g., “If a partner wanted me to perform oral sex on him, and I didn't want to, I would refuse” was changed to “I refuse to put my mouth on my partner's genitals if I don't want to, even if my partner insists”); (d) the phrase put my mouth on my partner's genitals was substituted for oral sex (see previous example); (e) the term sex was substituted for intercourse; and (6) easier to read words were substituted for more difficult to read words (e.g., begin was substituted for initiate; for a more thorough discussion of item revisions, see Quina, Rose, et al, 1997). In addition, because the larger study focused on HIV risk reduction, the items in the Pregnancy–STD Prevention subscale were changed to ask about condom or latex barrier use.…”