Arabic validation of the Reproductive Autonomy Scale among Egyptian women

Background The Reproductive Autonomy Scale (RAS) is a recent English validated reliable tool for measuring reproductive autonomy created by Ushma Upadhyay in the United States. It assesses women’s control over decisions related to contraception, pregnancy, and childbearing. RAS has not yet been validated for Arabic-speaking populations. The current study aimed to validate the Arabic version of the RAS among Egyptian married women in the reproductive age group. Subjects and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in three randomly selected primary health care centers among 400 Egyptian married women. Data was collected using an interview-administered questionnaire that included personal characteristics, women autonomy scale, and RAS. A standard forward-backward translation of RAS was done. The reliability of the translated scale was tested by Test- retest reliability and evaluation of the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Convergent validity was assessed by correlating the RAS with the women’s autonomy scale. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses (CFA & EFA) were used to test construct validity. Results The final Arabic validated form had excellent repeatability levels among the studied Egyptian women (ICC = 0.912). EFA of the long form of RAS resulted in 11 items captured by three factors: freedom from coercion, communication, and decision-making. Total variance explained was 60.37%. The alpha reliability coefficient for the entire scale was 0.74. CFA showed that all items loaded significantly on their hypothesized three latent factors. The fit indices were acceptable (TLI = 0.97; CFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.04 and SRMR = 0.04). Conclusions The final Arabic validated form has excellent repeatability levels and good face validity. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42506-026-00215-4.