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

Abstract

A well-established need exists for valid and reliable measures of empowerment across sectors, including in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). To address this need, we followed a multi-phased, theory-informed approach to develop the Agency, Resources, and Institutional Structures for Sanitation-related Empowerment (ARISE) scales, a set of 16 distinct yet interrelated scales, each of which measures a different sub-domain of women’s empowerment related to urban sanitation in low- and middle-income country settings. The objective of the current phase of work was to evaluate the validity, reliability, and measurement properties of the ARISE scales using cross-sectional data collected between August 2021 and June 2022 from a total of 5,586 women across eight cities in Asia and Africa: Meherpur (N = 720) and Saidpur (N = 730), Bangladesh; Narsapur (N = 721), Tiruchirappalli (N = 563), and Warangal (N = 704), India; Dakar, Senegal (N = 720); Kampala, Uganda (N = 713); and Lusaka, Zambia (N = 715). We evaluated the psychometric properties of the scales, including by using factor analytic methods to assess structural validity and measurement invariance across country settings and over time; calculating coefficients of internal consistency (composite reliability) and test-retest reliability; and using generalized linear regression, nonparametric Spearman rank correlations, t-tests, and ANOVA to test for construct, known groups, and criterion validity. We provide researchers and implementers with tools to measure sub-constructs of sanitation-related empowerment in a valid and reliable way, to generate data for better targeting, design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to improve women’s empowerment in the context of urban sanitation at the program and policy level. We also describe how these scales can advance the measurement of women’s empowerment not only in WASH but across sectors, through their contribution to our understanding of empowerment as a universal concept and process that can be quantitatively measured across contexts and populations using rigorous psychometric methods.