Development and psychometric properties of a questionnaire to evaluate sustainable waste separation behavior and environmental health promotion.

Background: Assessment of benefits and barriers of waste separation at source is necessary to identify the effective factors in this field. This study aims at designing and validation of a questionnaire assessing the barriers and benefits of waste separation at source from the viewpoint of women based on the community-based social marketing model in Genaveh Township, Bushehr, Iran METHODS: In phase 1, a literature review and focus group discussion were conducted to identify the barriers and benefits of waste separation at the source and to design the items and questionnaires. In phase 2, a psychometric evaluation was performed, including face validity, content validity, structural validity, and reliability. Data were analyzed by SPSS and R software.

Results: Out of 56 initial items, seven items with the content validity ratio less than 0.56 were removed, and one with the content validity index less than 0.79 was reviewed. Content validity ratio of the questionnaire was 0.782 and content validity index 0.957. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that the five and seven-factor models showed good fit. Considering the possible existence of some items in several factors, confirmatory factor analysis was used in the next step. Finally, two items were removed and two others were displaced. The reliability of the instrument was confirmed by internal consistency (α = 0.92) and its stability by the test-retest (ICC = 0.83).

Conclusions: The valid and reliable 48-item questionnaire is a suitable instrument for assessing the barriers and benefits of waste separation at source from the viewpoint of women based on the community-based social marketing model in Genaveh Township, Bushehr.