A Reproductive Health Survey on Unintended Pregnancy in Yamagata, Japan: Feasibility of the Survey and Test-Retest Reliability and Validity of a Questionnaire

抄録

We have designed a survey to investigate factors related to unintended pregnancy using a newly devised questionnaire. This pilot study was conducted to examine the feasibility of the study and the test-retest reliability and the validity of the questionnaire. Samples were 107 cervical and breast cancer screening participants aged 35-49 year-old in 1999 in Yamagata, Japan. The same questionnaires were mailed twice to examine the test-retest reliability. Women's medical records for cancer screening were used to examine the validity of the questionnaire. Ninety-six women agreed to participate in the study and 89.6% of them responded to the first survey. The agreements between two surveys were substantial to perfect for the nominal and ordinal data, and for the continuous data, the standard deviations (SDs) were less than 1 and the correlation coefficients were over 0.6. The comparison between medical record and questionnaire derived data showed perfect agreements for reproductive items except age at last birth (SD: 0.71, correlation coefficient: 0.97), and fair agreements for drinking and smoking habits. Obtaining information on unintended pregnancy by questionnaire is feasible, and the test-retest reliability and the validity of the questionnaire are satisfactory. Currently we are conducting a survey with a larger sample. J Epidemiol, 2000 ; 10 : 376-382