Development and Structural Validation of the Husbands Adaptation of Iranian women with mastectomy scale (HAMS)

Background Mastectomy significantly impacts the patient's self-image and sexual attractiveness, often disrupting marital relationships. Husbands of these patients require adaptation to support the acceptance of the situation and facilitate the patient's treatment. This study aimed to further validate the HAMS. Method This descriptive-analytical study included 468 husbands of patients undergoing mastectomy who met the inclusion criteria. The HAMS, previously validated for reliability and validity by the researcher, was distributed among participants after providing the necessary information and obtaining written informed consent. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed using IBM SPSS AMOS version 24. Results The confirmatory factor analysis validated the 51-item questionnaire with six dimensions, excluding items 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 36, and 39. The results indicated that the items of the tool had high intercorrelation within the factors, effectively representing their respective constructs (CR > AVE). Divergent validity analysis demonstrated the uniqueness of the construct (MSV < AVE). Additionally, the HTMT ratio analysis of subscales confirmed the construct's desirable divergence (HTMT < 0.85). Furthermore, all path coefficients between items and constructs were statistically significant (p > 0.05), indicating convergent relationships among related items of each construct. Conclusions The present research introduces a tool that can be utilized for assessing and evaluating adaptation among husbands of Iranian Muslim women undergoing mastectomy.