Content Validity of a Questionnaire Specifically Designed to Clinically Identify Pediatric Environmental Exposures

• Author / Creator

  Jaggi, Parneet K

• Various clinical questionnaires exist to assist clinicians with the diagnosis, prognosis, long-term follow up of a disease, or even to assess quality of life. However, any questionnaire must be evaluated for its validity and reliability before application. Invalid or unreliable questionnaires can lead to bias or outcome misinterpretations. The Pediatric Environmental Health History (PEHH) questionnaire developed for clinical use is no exception and underwent a fundamental validation step, content validity. For the first phase, a modified Delphi technique was used to collect expert consensus for the original PEHH (200 questions spanning 9 sections). Experts were identified throughout the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSUs) network and the World Health Organization (WHO). Percent Agreement (PA) is an average percent of experts rating an individual question as relevant (e.g. “agree”) per section. A PA of 90% was used as a criterion for the number of rounds required. After two rounds, excellent expert consensus for question relevancy was achieved for the nine domains indicated by a PA greater than 90%. Experts indicated agreement with the comprehensiveness of each PEHH section. A final version was generated based on the expert suggestions, consisting of 161 refined questions. In the second phase of the study, parents/guardians assessed PEHH usability through examining ease of answering questions, comprehension, and respondent burden. Pediatricians assessed PEHH usefulness for the clinical setting. After PEHH completion, 44 parents/guardians indicated good usability for all of the survey questions and were satisfied with the length and time taken to complete it. Upon PEHH review, 15 pediatricians indicated good usefulness, but were dissatisfied with its length and anticipated administration time suggesting need for a shorter version. Through these study phases, content validity for the PEHH has been established ensuring an evaluation of question/item relevancy and comprehensiveness, and usability and usefulness. A relevant and comprehensive set of questions to clinically explore environmental risk factors for the pediatric population is available for future data collection, which can undergo further validation (e.g. construct validity).

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Content validity
  • Pediatrics
  • Environments
  • Health history
  • Questionnaire

• Graduation date

  Spring 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3VT2N

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.