The development and psychometric testing of a self-care scale for dysmenorrhic adolescents

The purposes of this research were to develop and test a self-care scale for dysmenorrhic adolescents. A focus group was employed to obtain information on dysmenorrhic self-care behavior of adolescents. A convenience sample of 361 adolescent girls aged 13-18 were employed who had experienced cramping pain in the lower abdomen during their menstrual periods at least two times within the 6 months prior to the study. Cronbach' s alpha of the scale was found to be 0.89 and both content and construct validity were addressed by a contrast-groups approach and confirmatory factor analysis. It was concluded that the resulting scale was both reliable and valid.