Methods: We derived the questionnaire from literature reviews, and a focus group with 9 women aged 35-50. The one hundred-item DCQ was developed to measure the performance objectives of a psycho-educational intervention related to dietary calcium in the main study. Items in the DCQ were written in English. They were translated into Chinese and then back translated. Content validity of both the English and Chinese DCQ was measured as content validity index (CVI) and assessed by experts with background of education and/or nutrition. Reliability of the Chinese DCQ, described as intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), was assessed using a test-retest method. Women with similar characteristics as the study target population completed the DCQ on two separate occasions over a four-week period. The DCQ was adjusted and repeated test-retest assessments were conducted in order to achieve a high reliability.

Findings: The CVI of the English DCQ was 1.00, while the Chinese version had a CVI of 0.86. For reliability, the four parts of the Chinese DCQ, knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and stages of behavioral change, obtained an ICC in the range of 0.72 to 0.94.

Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that DCQ meets the psychometric criteria for content validity and reliability for assessing knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and stages of behavioral change, associated with dietary calcium, of pre-menopausal Chinese women.

Implications: The DCQ can be used to assess knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and stages of behavioral change, related to dietary calcium, of pre-menopausal women in other research setting, or modified to target on other populations at risk. Procedures on assessing content validity and reliability can be employed to develop other measuring instruments.

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Back to 15th International Nursing Research Congress
Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004