Appearance validation of a water insecurity scale: qualitative evaluation in Latin America
Creators: name: Gómez, Olga Luz Espinal
name: De Medeiros, Maria Angélica Tavares
name: Salles-Costa, Rosana
name: Bejarano, Elizabeth Valoyes
name: García, Olga Patricia
name: Rios-Castillo, Israel
name: Santos, Sandra Maria Chaves Dos
name: Ronquillo, Dolores
name: Quiñonez, Hugo Melgar
name: Madrid, Claudia Del Rosario Sánchez
name: Girona, Agda Dra Alejandra
name: Palmeira, Poliana
name: Grossi, Mauro Del
name: Caamaño, María Del Carmen
name: Fajardo, Gabriela Paz
name: Matamoros, Sara Eloísa Del Castillo
name: Ianina Tuñón
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: Water security has been defined as the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to quality water in sufficient quantity to maintain livelihoods, human well-being, and socioeconomic development, which facilitates a healthy and productive lifestyle ( United Nations University, 2013; Jepson et al., 2017). Water insecurity occurs when water security is compromised and can be manifested by problems of scarcity, excess (eg flooding), or water contamination (Miller et al., 2021). The insecurity of water has been associated with various problems. In the field of health, it has been associated with an increase in musculoskeletal injuries in women who have to fetch water, psychosocial stress (Winter et al., 2021), and the incidence of diarrhea due to lack of water quality (Falkenberg &amp; Saxena, 2018), as well as delayed child growth and increased risk of maternal mortality in poor-quality water environments (Nicholas et al., 2019). Water insecurity has been shown to affect maternal and child health through four pathways: physical and psychosocial health, nutrition, and economic well-being (Ahmed et al., 2021). The general objective of this study will be to validate the appearance of a water insecurity scale (HWISE) in a low-income population from different countries in Latin America. Specifically, the understanding of the HWISE scale will be evaluated in a population in an urban area and in a rural area, both with low resources, and a comparison of the results of each country will be made. This is a qualitative study to be carried out in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Uruguay. The focus groups will be carried out in populations in conditions of social and economic vulnerability in the participating countries. Low-income people from rural and urban areas will participate. Non-probabilistic sampling will be used. 12 women per group will be invited to participate in focus groups. Four focus groups will be held in each country, two per type of population. The research protocol will be submitted to the Bioethics Committee of the Autonomous University of Querétaro. In addition, it will be submitted to the Bioethics Committee of the University of Panama. A sociodemographic data survey will be applied. The validity of the questionnaire will be evaluated. The water insecurity questionnaire will be analyzed in Spanish. Descriptive analyzes will be carried out. The focus groups will be analyzed by independent researchers. AtlasTI will be used.