Validity and reliability of a questionnaire on fecundability

Area of Science:

• Reproductive Health
• Epidemiology
• Survey Methodology

Background:

• Assessing fertility problems requires reliable and valid questionnaires.
• Previous research has not fully evaluated the validity and reliability of short fertility questionnaires across different administration methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the validity and reliability of a novel short questionnaire designed to assess fertility problems.
• To compare the effectiveness of personal interviews, telephone interviews, and mailed questionnaires in data collection for fertility research.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving 151 moderately educated women with prior early pregnancy failure.
• Validity was assessed using personal interviews, telephone interviews, and mail questionnaires.
• Reliability was tested on 89 women with at least one child, administering the questionnaire twice over 3-5 weeks.

Main Results:

• No systematic errors were detected across all administration methods during the validity study.
• Personal interviews exhibited the lowest levels of random error.
• Telephone interviews and mailed questionnaires demonstrated high stability, indicating good reliability.

Conclusions:

• The fertility problems questionnaire demonstrates reasonable performance but requires rephrasing for certain items.
• The optimal method for approaching study populations (personal, telephone, mail) depends on the specific research question and desired data quality.
• Further refinement of the questionnaire items is recommended for improved accuracy in fertility problem assessment.