This issue of Health Care for Women International contains articles developed by researchers wishing to contribute methodologically to global women’s health literature. As you will notice, the researchers are from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Many of the contributions relate to scales developed or validated by the researchers. Most of the articles do not meet our current standards for publication. We no longer plan to publish scale development manuscripts when the scale is being developed for use in one country or when an existing scale is being validated for use in one region only (Sandra Patrícia Arantes do Souto et al.; Shayesteh Shirzadi et al.; Hediye Karakoca and Nebahat Özerdoğan; Radina et al.). While we know it is important for such scales to be developed, we believe that there are more appropriate journals for such work, and we encourage authors to search the Taylor and Francis database (https://taylorandfrancis.com/search-results/?query=journals+that+publish+work+on+scale+development&pg=&sort=&tab=).
Know please that although we consider substantive work on the fear of childbirth (Sandra Patrícia Arantes do Souto et al.), barriers to mammography (Shayesteh Shirzadi et al.), how practitioners engage in protecting the privacy of obstetric and gynecological patients (Hediye Karakoca and Nebahat Özerdoğan), and quality of life in cancer patients (Radina et al.) to be of global interest, if your work is primarily about scale development, you will need to seek a different journal. There will be some subtle exceptions to our publication policy. We thought it important to publish the work about using the Barkin Index of Maternal Functioning particularly with Ethiopian mothers (Selamawit Gebeyehu et al.) because the authors explained that “scholars should not assume that the psychometric properties and appropriateness of scales will remain robust when those scales are used in contexts that differ from the contexts in which they were created.” Also, we might continue to publish scale development work when the authors’ contribution is to theory development (Radina et al.).
The contribution of Gehani et al., is to both methodology and practice and we will continue to publish such work. These researchers performed a methodological experiment regarding clinical trials for women during pregnancy learning community-based follow-ups improved participant retention because the mothers appreciated that home visits or visits in local hospitals were mother-friendly. We also call the readers’ attention to the work of Malecki and colleagues who explain the utility of body mapping, an “arts-based research technique that uses a life-sized outline of the participant’s body and symbols that visually represent their lived experiences” in their study of anorexia. Some readers may be familiar with a similar technique used in the global study of physical and emotional abuse.
As always, consult the table of literature contributions while you read and learn.
Editor-in-Chief
March 16, 2024 [email protected]