The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument for assessing empowerment related to the health of Thai female factory worker. The study was based on the following research questions
1) What are the components of an empowerment scale related to the health of female factory worker in Thailand?
2) How valid and reliable is this newly developed empowerment scale related to the health of female factor workers in Thailand? Regarding the purpose and questions of the study, the researcher applied both qualitative and quantitative methods, initially, the scale was developed from integrating the literature reviews with the in-depth individual interviews of 12 Thai female factor workers. Later, the steps of De Vellis (1991) were randomly recruited from ten factories in the manufacturing industry, which employs a total of 117,242 female factor workers in the south of Thailand.
For the components of the WHES, the fore factors consisted of 59 items and explained a total variance of 39.276% . The resulting for factors included:
1) Assurance to control action of personal well-being,
2) The ability to influence a reciprocal community support in solving health problems,
3) Actions to achieve visions and goals of health, and
4) Increasing a sense of self-awareness to become and remain health.
The psychometric properties of the WHES included
1) A content validity index of 0.94,
2) construct validity using EFA on the total sample and then splitting the sample and the splitting the ample into two groups and performs it again, The results showed the similarity in factor items, factor loadings, variance percentage, eigenvalue and communalities
3) hypothesis test displayed significant correlations for most of the demographic variables and the WHES total score
4) Cronbach’s coefficient alpha internal consistence reliability demonstrated the alpha of the fore factors and displayed a total scale ranging from 0.811-0.956 indication a highly reliable internal consistence, an
5) test-retest techniques showed the reliability coefficient of the WHES subscales and total scale ranged from 0.606-0.724 (p<.001). The innovative empowerment scale developed as a result of this stud can be used to determine the extent of empowerment related to the health of Thai female factor workers. The information can be used to enable health care providers, particularly nurse, to promote and maintain women’s health such as improving health and safety in the workplace. Furthermore, the WHES can be used to advocate further research in various fields such as nursing practice, education, research, and theory development.
