نوع مقاله : پژوهشی

نویسندگان

• فاطمه اللهیاری ¹
• رسول نوروزی سیدحسینی ²
• محمد احسانی ³
• قدرت اله باقری راغب ⁴

¹ دانشجوی دکتری

² دانشیار گروه مدیریت ورزشی دانشکده علوم انسانی، دانشگاه تربیت مدرس، تهران، ایران.

³ استاد گروه مدیریت ورزشی، دانشکده علوم انسانی، دانشگاه تربیت مدرس، تهران، ایران

⁴ دانشیار دانشکده مدیریت و حسابداری، دانشکدگان فارابی، دانشگاه تهران، قم، ایران

چکیده

توانمندسازی زنان به عنوان محور توسعه پایدار، نیازمند ابزاری استاندارد برای سنجش ابعاد چندگانه آن است. این مقاله با هدف طراحی پرسشنامه ای روا و پایا برای سنجش توانمندسازی زنان ایرانی، انجام شد. با بررسی ادبیات موضوع، مصاحبه و مشورت با متخصصان، پرسشنامه با ۳۷ گویه در هفت حوزه (توانمندسازی روانشناختی، تصمیم گیری، اجتماعی، جنسیتی، اقتصادی، سلامت و رفاه و مدنی) طراحی شد. سپس، اعتبار سازه پرسشنامه با استفاده از تحلیل عاملی اکتشافی بررسی شد. نتایج، ۷ زیرمقیاس را تأیید کرد که ۵۹٪ از واریانس داده ها را تبیین می کردند و ساختار منطقی ابزار را نشان دادند. در نهایت، پایایی پرسشنامه با محاسبه ضریب آلفای کرونباخ ۰.۸۳ برای کل مقیاس، تأیید شد که حاکی از همسانی درونی مطلوب بود. استفاده از نمونه بزرگ و ترکیب روش‌های کیفی و کمی به افزایش اعتبار نتایج کمک کرد. ابزارهای موجود از توجه به ابعاد روانی-اجتماعی غافلند و با بافت جوامع فارسی‌زبان تطابق ندارند ولی این پرسشنامه جامع قادر است ابعاد پیچیده توانمندسازی زنان را در بافت فرهنگی-اجتماعی ایران اندازه‌گیری کند و با شناسایی چالش‌های ساختاری از جمله موانع فرهنگی-اجتماعی، قوانین تبعیض‌آمیز و نبود ابزارهای چندبُعدیِ بوم‌محور ، نقاط قوت و ضعف برنامه‌ها را شناسایی نماید. یافته‌ها نشان می‌دهند این ابزار نه‌تنها برای ارزیابی وضعیت کنونی کاربرد دارد بلکه شکاف موجود در ابزارهای پیشین را پر کرده و با شناسایی موانع زمینه‌ای، داده‌های لازم برای اصلاح سیاست‌ها، طراحی مداخلات چندبُعدی و پایش پیشرفت به سوی اهداف توسعه پایدار را فراهم می‌کند.

کلیدواژه‌ها

• Empowerment
• ؛ Women؛
• Measurement؛
• Questionnaire

موضوعات

• مطالعات زنان

عنوان مقاله [English]

Development of a Measurement Tool for Women's Empowerment: Steps and Results

نویسندگان [English]

• Fateme Allahyari ¹
• Rasool Norouzi Seyyed Hossini ²
• Mohammad Ehsani ³
• Ghodratollah Bagheri Ragheb ⁴

¹ Ph.D. Candidate

² Associate Prof. of Sport Management,. Sports Sciences Department, Faculty of Humanities, T.M.U. Tehran

³ Professor of Sport Management, Sports Sciences Department, Faculty of Humanities, T.M.U. Tehran, Iran

⁴ Associate Professor, of Faculty of Management and Accounting,, Farabi college, University of Tehran, Qom, Iran

چکیده [English]

Development of a Measurement Tool for Women's Empowerment: Steps and Results

Introduction

Empowering women as a key concept in achieving gender justice and sustainable development has attracted the attention of researchers, policymakers, and international organizations in recent decades. This multidimensional process not only refers to improving economic and social conditions for women but also includes enhancing individual agency, access to equal opportunities, and changing unequal institutional structures. However, the lack of standardized and localized tools for comprehensively measuring various dimensions of women's empowerment in societies with specific cultural-social characteristics, such as Iran, has always been a research challenge. Previous studies in Iran have primarily focused on economic dimensions (such as access to financial resources), while psychological aspects (self-efficacy), social dimensions (participation in groups), and civic aspects (awareness of legal rights) have been less explored. This conceptual and methodological gap has led to the design of ineffective programs and the neglect of the specific needs of women in different areas of Iran, especially in rural and marginalized communities. The present article aims to fill this research gap by developing and validating a multidimensional and context-specific questionnaire for measuring the empowerment of Iranian women. This tool integrates global indicators (such as access to economic resources) and culturally-socially specific components of Iran (such as gender attitudes), enabling a more accurate assessment of women's status. The significance of this research lies not only in providing evidence-based data for policymaking but also in creating a comparative framework for cross-cultural studies in Persian-speaking communities (such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan).

Research Methodology

This research is descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose, applicable, and with a mixed approach (qualitative-quantitative), designed and executed in three main stages. First, in the qualitative stage for the design of the questionnaire items, a systematic review of the literature in reputable scientific databases including Scopus, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, and Google Scholar was conducted using relevant keywords such as "women's empowerment," "measurement tools," and "questionnaire," resulting in an initial questionnaire with 79 questions. Then, through semi-structured interviews with 14 experts, the items were reviewed for their relevance to the cultural context of Iran, and 37 questions were selected as the final questionnaire items based on the CVR (Content Validity Ratio) index and content validity (CVI). For determining face validity, the questionnaire was primarily tested among 30 women. In the second stage, which was quantitative, the final questionnaire was distributed among a sample of 800 Iranian women (aged 15 and above) from five geographical areas (north, south, east, west, center) using cluster sampling proportional to the population distribution. Construct validity was examined through exploratory factor analysis (principal component analysis followed by varimax rotation) to assess the structure of the questionnaire. To ensure the sample size was adequate, the Bartlett test and KMO index were used. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated by calculating Cronbach's alpha. Finally, the collected data from the 36-item multidimensional questionnaire, along with demographic data (such as age, marital status, education, and employment), were analyzed using SPSS version 27 to ensure the representativeness of the sample from the target population.

Findings

After the first phase and literature review, 79 questions were designed for the questionnaire. Subsequently, after receiving feedback from experts and professors regarding the relevance and clarity of the proposed questions, the final draft of the questionnaire was prepared with 37 questions based on the Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and Content Validity Index (CVI), and 42 questions were removed from the questionnaire due to not achieving a suitable CVR and CVI score.

In the second phase, the adequacy of the sample for extracting factors was evaluated through correlation matrix analysis, using KMO and Bartlett's tests. The KMO and Bartlett tests yielded values of 0.88 and P <0.001 respectively, indicating the adequacy of the sample size. After exploratory factor analysis, a Varimax rotation revealed 9 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, and ultimately 7 factors were identified as subscales of empowerment, labeled as psychological empowerment, decision-making, social, gender, economic, health and well-being, and civil based on the characteristics of the items placed under each factor according to their factor loadings. Among the 37 items in the questionnaire, one item did not achieve significant loading in any of the seven subscales, and thus, the final questionnaire consisted of 36 items. According to Table 3, extracted from the research findings, the identified subscales accounted for 59% of the variance in the data, which is reasonable for a questionnaire. The final questionnaire consisted of 36 items divided into 7 categories as follows:

Psychological Empowerment explains 7% of the total variance and six items.

Decision-Making Empowerment accounts for 8.9% of the total variance and includes five items.

Social Empowerment contains 8 items and accounts for 14.9% of the total variance.

Gender Empowerment accounts for 8.3% of the total variance and including four items.

Economic Empowerment accounts for 8.9% of the total variance and includes five items.

Health and Family Well-being Empowerment accounts for 5% of the total variance and includes four items.

Civil Empowerment: Accounting for 4% of the total variance and including four items. The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was found to be 0.83, indicating a high reliability of the tool. The subscales also exhibited acceptable reliability.

The results of the data analysis from 800 female participants (mean age 31 to 45 years, 68% with university education) indicated significant diversity in employment status and a balanced geographical distribution (sampling from five regions of Iran). The highest share of variance was attributed to social empowerment (14.9%) and the lowest to civil empowerment (4%). The economic and decision-making dimensions each explained 8.9% of the variance, which aligns with previous studies emphasizing the key role of access to financial resources and autonomy in women's empowerment.

Conclusion

This research, by designing and validating a multidimensional questionnaire to measure women's empowerment in Iran, has taken an important step towards filling the existing gap in context-specific measurement tools. The integration of global indicators (such as access to economic resources) and cultural components (such as gender attitudes) has made this tool particularly suitable for societies with traditional structures like Iran. The designed tool, covering dimensions such as psychological, social, and civil that have received less attention in previous studies, provides a more comprehensive assessment of women's status. Findings indicate that the economic and gender subscales have high reliability and validity, while the civil subscale requires fundamental revisions. This tool enables policymakers to evaluate empowerment programs more accurately and design more targeted interventions. Additionally, the data obtained can serve as a framework for comparative studies in communities facing similar challenges (such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan). However, its intercultural adaptability requires further research focusing on the indigenous characteristics of each region. It is suggested that in future studies, the capabilities of this tool be expanded by adding more relevant items to civil empowerment and employing international samples. The ultimate achievement of this research is to strengthen the link between theory and practice in the field of gender justice by providing precise and applicable evidence for stakeholders. Ultimately, the development of such tools not only contributes to the scientific advancement of gender studies but also serves as a bridge between theory and practice, enhancing the role of women in achieving sustainable development goals.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

• توانمندسازی
• زنان
• ابزار اندازه‌گیری
• پرسشنامه