Introducing a new measure for assessing self-efficacy in response to air pollution hazards for pregnant women

A self-efficacy instrument should be condition-specific. there are several instruments for measuring self-efficacy, butnone are air pollution-specific. this study aimed to develop a self-efficacy measure for assessing pregnant women’sresponses to air pollution hazards. a random sample of pregnant women aged between 18 and 35 years attendingthree prenatal care centers were entered into the study. prenatal care centers randomly selected from a list ofcenters located in different geographical regions of tehran, iran. after careful consideration and performing contentand face validity, a 4-item measure was developed and participants completed the questionnaire. reliability wasestimated using internal consistency and validity was assessed by performing confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) andknown group comparison. in all 200 eligible pregnant women were studied. the mean age of participants was 26.9(sd = 4.8) years and it was 27.9 (sd = 9.1) weeks for gestational age. the findings showed almost perfect results forboth content validity ratio (cvr = 1) and content validity index (cvi = 1). the confirmatory factor analysis indicated agood fit to the data, and known group comparison revealed satisfying results. internal consistency as measured bythe cronbach’s alpha coefficient was found to be 0.74. in general, the findings suggest that this new generatedscale is a reliable and valid specific measure of self-efficacy in response to air pollution hazards for pregnantwomen. however, further studies are needed to establish stronger psychometric properties for the questionnaire.