The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to determine the global applicability of a survey tool designed to assess sexual health practices and behaviours by testing it in a variety of demographics of the general population around the world. This process will require verifying the comprehensibility of the constructs on a global level and the consistency and correctness with which the constructs are evaluated when translated and implemented in different contexts. This project aims to bring the Italian contribution to this global research under the umbrella of the WHO. The cognitive interview will be used to determine if the participants are able to understand and answer the questions of the tool effectively; it will also determine whether questions are interpreted as intended. The research team will deal with the process of translation and adaptation of the tool into the Italian language as well as the administration of the tool through the cognitive interview. The target population of this study will be the general population over the age of 18 with a focus on involving also members of rural communities, people with physical disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual and / or transgender people and the elderly. The target population of this study will be recruited throughout the Italian territory using the internet and social media and the interviews will be conducted via teleconference. This project gives the great opportunity to participate in a multicentred research that counts more than 40 countries involved globally and that is supervised by an international leading institutional body such as the WHO. Moreover, at the national level, the Italian participation in this project provides for the possibility of collecting national data on variables of extreme interest for sexual and reproductive health, that could help identifying critical areas of interest for future policy making and health related programs in Italy.
This project gives the great opportunity to participate in a multicentred research that counts more than 40 countries involved globally and that is supervised by an international leading institutional body such as the WHO. These elements, as well as being important from an institutional point of view and visibility of the research of our university, also guarantee a high scientific level of the research process. Specifically, it is a sophisticated and globally revised research methodology to allow the adequacy of data collection and the comparability of results transnationally.
Moreover, at the national level, the Italian participation in this project provides for the possibility of collecting national data on variables of extreme interest for sexual and reproductive health such as pregnancy, contraception, HIV, sexual abuse, first sexual experiences, sexual practices, sexual identity, perceived rights, and other sexual health outcomes. This type of data, which are often missing and overlooked nationally or collected separately in cross sectional situations on small groups, will be collected in an aggregate manner. This will allow us to have a more complex and specific vision of the situation relating to sexual and reproductive health in our country, also suggesting how these variables interact with each other (e.g., first sexual experience, present sexual practices and methods of contraception and protection against sexually transmitted infections). In this sense, the results of this study at the national level could become extremely important for identifying critical areas of interest for future policy making and health related programs in Italy.
Finally, instruments that are meant to be implemented cross nationally through a cognitive interviewing can help to establish the ¿cultural portability¿ of constructs across countries, and therefore the subsequent ability to compare data collected between countries [14]. As described by Willis, these so-called `cross-cultural cognitive interviews¿ (CCCI) ¿determine whether the different questionnaire versions illustrate the key property of cross-cultural equivalence; that is, whether the range of interpretations associated with the evaluated items varies acceptably between cultural or language groups, given the survey measurement objectives [17].¿ This allows us to guarantee cultural relevance to the Italian version of the interview that will be used and to have a validated tool that can be useful for future research in Italy and possible future adaptation of the present tool for the assessment of sexual and reproductive health in clinical settings.