Sexual Health in Islam: Constructing a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) Scale for the Jordanian Context

Studies have reported knowledge gaps and limitations in access to sexual health information among Jordanian youth and adults. This study aimed to develop a knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) scale based on an integrative framework that combines health and religion. The scale was developed through stages of content validity and construct validity. The scale was presented to a group of parents, mosque imams, and educational sciences experts (N = 53) to judge the items' relevance and representativeness. The second stage involved exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (N = 758) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (N = 311). Difficulty and discrimination coefficient tests were performed (N = 1069). Following content validity procedures and EFA, the scale was shortened from 90 to 67 items, distributed across three factors: knowledge (25 items), attitudes (21 items), and practice (21 items). The total variance explained in the attitudes and practice factors was 59.64%. The results of CFA showed that the attitudes and practice factors demonstrated unidimensionality and good construct validity. The test-retest reliability coefficients for the three factors were 0.901, 0.782, and 0.853, respectively. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the three factors were high (0.892, 0.802, and 0.745, respectively). Finally, the results showed that the internal consistency values (Cronbach's α) for the items ranged from 0.718 to 0.883. We conclude that the KAP Sexual Health Scale (Islamic Context-Jordan) is a reliable scientific tool. It has the potential to have a significant scientific and practical impact on improving sexual health.