Design and Implementation Content Validity Study: Development of an instrument for measuring Patient-Centered Communication

The importance of content validity in the instrument psychometric and its relevance with reliability, have made it an essential step in the instrument development. This article attempts to give an overview of the content validity process and to explain the complexity of this process by introducing an example.

We carried out a methodological study conducted to examine the content validity of the patient-centered communication instrument through a two-step process (development and judgment). At the first step, domain determination, sampling (item generation) and instrument formation and at the second step, content validity ratio, content validity index and modified kappa statistic was performed. Suggestions of expert panel and item impact scores are used to examine the instrument face validity.

From a set of 188 items, content validity process identified seven dimensions includes trust building (eight items), informational support (seven items), emotional support (five items), problem solving (seven items), patient activation (10 items), intimacy/friendship (six items) and spirituality strengthening (14 items). Content validity study revealed that this instrument enjoys an appropriate level of content validity. The overall content validity index of the instrument using universal agreement approach was low; however, it can be advocated with respect to the high number of content experts that makes consensus difficult and high value of the S-CVI with the average approach, which was equal to 0.93.

This article illustrates acceptable quantities indices for content validity a new instrument and outlines them during design and psychometrics of patient-centered communication measuring instrument.