PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE HEALTH EMPOWERMENT SCALE ARABIC VERSION FOR WORKING WOMEN IN SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

In a country such as Saudi Arabia where gender equality-related challenges continue to be social issues, measuring the health empowerment of Saudi working women is critical in understanding the real picture of women empowerment in the country during this era of great transformation. Therefore, we conducted this research to evaluate psychometric properties of the Health Empowerment Scale Arabic version (HES-A) in measuring the health empowerment of Saudi working women. We surveyed a sample of 322 Saudi working women from June to August 2020 using an online survey constituting questions on demographic and work-related information and the HES-A. The computed values for the item-level content validity index of the 8 scale items were from .80 and 1.00, whereas the computed value of the scale-level content validity index by average method was .91. The principal component and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a unidimentional scale. The computation revealed an alpha of .92. Education, type of employment, years of working experience, and salary were identified as significant factors influencing the health empowerment. The HES-A exhibited adequate validity and internal consistency for use in measuring the health empowerment of Saudi women. The HES-A can expand the research agenda on health empowerment Arab women. Researchers and policymakers could use the HES-A in assessing the status of health empowerment of Arabic-speaking women, which could inform policies and interventions aimed at ensuring health empowered women in this part of the globe.