Determinants of Psychosocial Health Status in Pregnant and Postpartum Women Experiencing Earthquake in Turkey.

OBJECTIVE: It is well known that natural disasters such as earthquakes negatively affect physical and mental health by exposing people to excessive stress. The aim of this study was to investigate determinants of psychosocial health status among the pregnant and postpartum women who experienced earthquake in Türkiye. METHODS: Pregnant and postpartum women (n = 125) living in tent cities in the Kahramanmaras region formed the study sample. Data were collected between February 20 and 26, 2023, through face-to-face interviews. The instruments used for data collection were the Introductory Form, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, the Traumatic Childbirth Perception Scale, and the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-Short Scale. RESULTS: A moderate positive relationship was found between stress and posttraumatic stress and traumatic childbirth perception in pregnant and postpartum women, and a high positive relationship was found between anxiety and depression. A high level of relationship was found between anxiety and stress and depression. CONCLUSIONS: It is seen that the psychosocial health of pregnant and postpartum women, who belong to the risk group in the earthquake zone, is at high risk. Psychological support is urgently needed to preserve and improve their psychosocial health.

Validity and reliability of a Turkish version of the human papillomavirus knowledge scale: a methodological study.

Objective: The aim of the study was to test validity and reliability of the Human Papilloma Virus Knowledge Scale (HPV-KS) in Turkish. Material and Methods: The methodological study was conducted with 920 participants at a training and research hospital in Ankara, Turkey, between February and May 2019. The data collection form consisted of descriptive characteristics of the participants and HPV-KS. Guidelines for the Process of Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Self-Reported Measures were followed for the language and cultural adaptation of the scale. Content validity, exploratory, and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to test the validity of the scale. The scale's reliability was assessed using the item-total correlation, Cronbach's alpha, and test-retest analysis. Results: In line with the experts' suggestions, two item were excluded from the scale. The scale content validity index was found to be 0.96. The exploratory factor analysis determined the four subscales of the scale with 33-items. The explained variance was found to be 64.56%. In the confirmatory factor analysis, all the goodness of fit indexes had acceptable values. The item-total correlations determined that each item was positively correlated with the total scale ranging from 0.53 to 0.80. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient calculated for the overall scale was 0.96. It was found that there was a statistically significant positive relationship between test and retest (r=0.166; p=0.05). Conclusion: The scale was shown to be a valid and reliable standard measurement that can be used to accurately evaluate the efficacy of health education provided by healthcare professionals.