Background: Female-heads of households not only have important roles to support financially families, but also have a critical role in educating children and supporting thousands of families across different countries.
Objectives: This study was designed with the aim of constructing an empowerment scale for female-heads of households and evaluating its psychometric characteristics.
Methods: The sample of this study was selected from two regions from west and south of Tehran. Through purposive sampling, 400 women who were supported by Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation participated voluntarily in this study. The main measure, Empowerment Scale for Female-Heads Households (ESFHH) was constructed by Jafari Roshan and Hajizadeh Moghaddam. This original measure was modified qualitatively in two pilot studies. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used. In the exploratory factor analysis, principal component analysis with Varimax extraction was used. Convergent validity was studied by correlation of this scale with the Conor-Davidson Resilience Scale.
Results: As the result of exploratory factor analysis, five factors were extracted as follows: Impact/management, General satisfaction, Self-efficacy, Competence and Empathy. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the structure of this model had an acceptable fit. The Convergent validity of this scale was satisfactory. There was a positive and significant correlation between Empowerment Scale for Female-Heads of Households and the Conor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Reliability as internal consistency of the whole scale was 0.80, which is similar to other individual/psychological empowerment scales. The internal consistency of the subscales were as follows: Impact/Management subscale, 0.75; General satisfaction subscale, 0.72, Self-efficacy subscale, 0.57; Competence subscale 0.58 and Empathy subscale, 0.52.
Conclusion: This scale is a valid and reliable scale, and can be used in fundamental and applied researches in the field of female-heads of households living specially in Tehran/Iran. This scale was constructed based on a construct that had considered both psychological and social aspects of human empowerment, however the final extracted scale was somehow similar to those scales that measure psychological empowerment, but included another important additional factor which was Empathy, a factor that is relevant in the collectivist Iranian context. Thus, this measure could be categorized as a psychosocial empowerment scale for research purposes. This measure should be cautiously used, and it is recommended to be used for similar groups and not to be used for evaluation of professional groups’ empowerment.
