Skip to main content

Table 1 Questionnaire on the RANAS psychosocial factors (e.g., factors and items for safe water behaviors), water related behaviors, and contextual factors

From: The link between mental health and safe drinking water behaviors in a vulnerable population in rural Malawi

Behavior Determinants

Selected Items

Risk Factors

 Vulnerability

In general, how high do you think is the risk that you get diarrhea?

 Severity

Imagine that you contracted diarrhea how severe would be the impact on your life in general?

 Health Knowledge

Can you tell me what causes diarrhea? Could you please tell me for each following aspects whether it is a cause or not? E.g. Water contaminated by bacteria.

Attitudinal Factors

 Belief effort

How effortful do you think is collecting drinking water from safe well?

 Belief time consuming

How time consuming do you think it is to always collect drinking water from safe well?

 Belief expensive

How expensive is it for you to always transport and storage water in a specific water container with lid?

 Belief distance (far away)

Do you think that the safe well of drinking water is far away from your usual area of activity?

 Belief certain for prevention

How certain are you that always drinking water from safe well prevents you and your family from getting diarrhea?

 Feelings

How much do you like collecting drinking water from safe well?

Normative Factors

 Others’ behavior household

How many people of your household always collect drinking water from safe well?

 Others’ behavior village

How many people of your village always collect drinking water from safe well?

 Others’ approval

People who are important to you like your family members, friends, the chief of the village, NGO workers or Pastor, how much they approve that you always collect drinking water from safe well?

 Personal obligation

How strong do you feel a personal obligation to yourself to always collect drinking water from safe well?

Ability Factors

 Confidence in performance

How sure are you that you can always collect drinking water from safe well?

 Difficult water

How difficult is to get as much drinking water as you need from safe well?

 Barriers distance

How confident are you that you can have drinking water from safe well, even if you have to walk some distance to reach the next safe well?

Self-Regulation Factors

 Coping plan

Do you have a plan what to do so that you always have drinking water from a safe well? Plan, please specify.

 Remembering (pay attention)

How much do you pay attention to collecting drinking water from safe well?

 Remembering (forgetting last 24 h)

When you think about the last 24 h: How often did it happen that you forgot to collect drinking water from safe well?

 Commitment (important)

How important is it for you to collect drinking water from safe well?

 Commitment (committed)

How committed do you feel to collect drinking water from safe well?

Behavior

 Water collection behavior

How often do you collect drinking water from safe well?

 Water transportation & storage behavior

How often do you transport and storage water in a specific water container with lid? [Only owners of a specific water container with lid were assessed]

Contextual factors

 Wealth index

Five items: ownership of radio, TV, mobile phone, electricity, and running water yes/no; sum scale from min. 0 to max. 5

 Hunger

Do you suffer from hunger often? 5-point Likert scale from 1 – never to 5 – very often

 Anxiety about the future situation of the family

How anxious are you about the future situation of your family? 5-point Likert scale from 1 – not at all to 5 – very much

 Diarrhea

How frequently do you suffer from diarrhea? 6-point rating scale from 1 - never to 6 - more than one day per week

  1. Notes. Response scales: 5-point Likert scale for all RANAS psychosocial factors and behaviors [from ‘not at all’ to ‘very much’; from ‘at no time’ to ‘almost each time’; from ‘never’ to ‘very often’; from ‘nobody’ to ‘almost all of them’], [yes; no; I don’t know]. Health knowledge sum scale ranged from min. 0 to max. 20 (yes/no questions)