Establishing Content Validity of a Survey Research Instrument

Abstract

Geriatric nursing competency in the acute care setting is a social mandate for the 21st century. This article reports on the content validation of an Australian research instrument, the Older Patients in Acute Care Survey (OPACS) that examines the attitudes, the knowledge, and the practices of nurses working with acute care patients. The OPACS tool was developed primarily to assist nurse educators to assess attitudes, knowledge, and practices of nursing staff in caring for older patients in the acute care setting; to evaluate the implementation of institution-specific educational interventions; and to improve quality of care given to older patients. An overall content validity index (CVI) for the OPACS was calculated (CVI = .918), revealing high content validity. Opinions (CVI = .92) and practices (CVI = .97) subconstructs revealed high content validity as well. Therefore, results indicate that the OPACS has high content validity in the U.S. acute care setting and could assist nurse educators in establishing and enhancing nurse competency in the care for geriatric patients in the future.

Psychometric testing of the Older Patients in Acute Care Survey (OPACS) in Australian final year nursing students

“…This choice of sample contrasts with that of previous studies attempting to validate the OPACS that have employed samples of qualified nurses. It is possible that this difference in samples is responsible for differences in results between the current study and previous studies that have supported use of the OPACS (Courtney et al, 2000;Malmgreen et al, 2009). Arguably, student nurses' attitudes are less coherent and well-formulated than the attitudes of registered nurses.…”

“…Although originally described as a measure of knowledge, attitudes and practice of nurses regarding care of older hospitalized patients (Courtney et al, 2000;Malmgreen et al, 2009), more recent studies have largely concluded that revised versions of the OPACS are, at best, measures of attitudes only Dikken, Hoogerduijn, Lagerwey, et al, 2017;van Schelven et al, 2015). This study of the OPACS confirms these conclusions in the Australian context.…”

“…Attempts have been made to validate the OPACS in other countries. Malmgreen et al (2009) aimed to establish validity of the OPACS in the USA and reported high content validity (CVI) for the survey (CVI = 0.92). However, when the Dutch version of the tool was studied in the Netherlands to establish content validity, the CVI obtained was 0.62 (van Schelven et al, 2015), which is well below the benchmark of 0.80, indicating poor overall content validity.…”

“…Given the need for a reliable and valid measure of nurses' knowledge and attitudes towards older hospitalized patients, the OPACS has been the focus of studies undertaken in the Netherlands and the United States of America (USA). Studies have used both qualitative (Malmgreen, Graham, Shortridge-Baggett, Courtney, & Walsh, 2009;van Schelven et al, 2015) and quantitative methodologies Dikken, Hoogerduijn, Lagerwey, et al, 2017). These studies have clearly identified the importance of the cultural setting in assessing the validity of the survey, and whilst the OPACS was developed and has been used in Australia (Courtney et al, 2000;Deasey, Kable, & Jeong, 2016), no studies have examined the OPACS' reliability or validity in the Australian context.…”

Content Validation of the Dutch Version of the “Older Patients in Acute Care Survey”, an Instrument to Measure the Attitude of Hospital Nurses towards Older Patients

“…In other countries high percentages of multimorbidity are also described [3]- [7]. As a result of aging and multimorbidity, more hospital nurses are confronted with older patients and more nurses are needed to provide in this care of the future [8] [9].…”