Genital Hygiene Behaviors and Predicting Factors in Women Living in A Country: The Sample of Turkey

The aim of this study was to determine the genital hygiene practices of women in different regions of Turkey and the factors influencing these practices. It is a descriptive, cross-sectional study.

Data Collection Tools Data for the study was collected through the "Data Collection Form" and "Genital Hygiene Behaviors Inventory", created by the researchers by reviewing the literature (Karahan, 2017; Cankaya, 2013; Elzayat et al. 2017; Adam and Saadia, 2016; Akgul, 2019).

Data collection form: A survey consisting of 13 questions about the age of the women, the amount of water consumed daily, the number of urinations, the genital infection status, and sexuality.

Genital Hygiene Behaviors Inventory - GHBI: A scale, developed by Karahan (2017), and for which written permission for use was obtained, consisting of 23 items in total and 3 sub-dimensions: "genital hygiene behaviors", "menstrual habits" and "abnormal findings". Items 1-12 evaluate genital hygiene, items 13-20 evaluate menstrual hygiene, and items 21-23 evaluate the awareness of abnormal findings. Items 7, 14, 19, 20 and 23 of the scale are the reversed items and are reverse coded during the evaluation. A minimum total of 23 and a maximum total of 115 points can be obtained from the 5-point Likert-type scale, where "1" point means "I totally disagree" and "5" points means "I completely agree". Higher scale scores correspond to better genital hygiene behaviors. The study evaluating the development of the scale and its validity and reliability determined the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient as 0.80 (Karahan, 2017); our study's Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was 0.78.

Data Collection The prepared data collection form and the scale were transferred to the computer environment and delivered online to the women through the snowball sampling method. It took approximately 10 minutes for each participant to complete the data collection forms Data Analysis The data collected in the study was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 25.0 (SPSS, v25.0) statistical analysis package program (IBM Company, Turkey). First the descriptive data of the study was analyzed. Mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values were calculated in the analysis of continuous data, and numbers and percentages were calculated in the analysis of categorical data. Next, non-parametric and parametric tests were used according to normality distributions. Pearson Chi-square test, Kruskal Wallis Test and Mann Whitney-U tests were used to analyze the data. A simple linear regression analysis model was used to determine the factors affecting genital hygiene behaviors. Statistical significance level was accepted as p<.05 at 95% confidence interval.