The Agency, Resources, and Institutional Structures for Sanitation-related Empowerment (ARISE) Scales: Development and validation of measures of women’s empowerment in urban sanitation for low- and middle-income countries

Development and validation of instrument to measure citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS Scale) for Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)

“…We followed the steps of Sinharoy et al in developing the CWIS instrument [7]. First, we identified the domains of the instrument based on Schrecongost et al'six criteria of CWIS [5].…”

The Agency, Resources, and Institutional Structures for Sanitation-related Empowerment (ARISE) Scales: Psychometric evaluation across Asia and Africa

“…The survey included scales to measure the 16 sub-domains of sanitation-related empowerment, 11 of which included menstruation-speci c sub-scales for women who experienced a menstrual period in the previous 12 months, and indices to assess women's direct experiences related to six sub-domains of empowerment (14). The 16 sub-domains and their operational de nitions are listed in Supplemental Table A.…”

“…To raise awareness and facilitate mainstreaming of gender in WASH, we developed the Agency, Resources, and Institutional Structures for Sanitation-related Empowerment (ARISE) scales and comprehensively assessed their validity, reliability, and measurement properties using data from two locations: Tiruchirappalli, India and Kampala, Uganda (13,14). Initial creation and validation of the ARISE scales followed an extensive systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis of the literature, which encompassed 257 publications on empowerment as it relates to water and sanitation (15).…”

“…We then adapted the sub-domains and accompanying de nitions from the van Eerdewijk et al framework (2) to be relevant to urban sanitation in low-and middle-income countries (15). We used this adapted framework to guide the development of the ARISE scales, which were assessed for validity and reliability in Tiruchirappalli and Kampala based on a published protocol and a priori analysis plan (13,14) that were developed to align with best practices for scale development (16). The result was a set of 16 validated, distinct yet interrelated scales, each of which measures a different sub-domain of women's empowerment related to urban sanitation in LMIC settings (14).…”

Gender and water, sanitation, and hygiene: Three opportunities to build from recent reporting on global progress, 2000–2022

“…However, large-scale, quantitative datasets are necessarily reductive, and the use of complementary sources and methods is critical for understanding and progressing gender equality and WASH within different country contexts. Other quantitative and qualitative tools are increasingly available [10][11][12]. Use of these and other methods can provide critical complementary information about the complex social change processes required to change gender dynamics, can track unintended outcomes, and thereby mitigate potential harm from wellintentioned efforts that inadvertently cause backlash and resistance.…”