[Development of a formative evaluation instrument for the community health worker health agent]

To validate a formative evaluation instrument of the community health agent.

Methodological study with a quantitative approach.

Carried out in two municipalities in the South of Brazil.

40 nurses for 350 community health agents.

The instrument was developed based on a competency framework of the Ministry of Health. The principal component analysis method was used for factor analysis. Internal validity and reliability were measured by Cronbach's alpha. The intraclass correlation coefficient, the Student's t test for paired samples and the ANOVA analysis of variance were used.

The factor analysis produced a factor structure with six factors and the 52 competencies of the original instrument were maintained. The final version of the instrument was structured into six domains: "Micro-area monitoring" (12 competencies), "Health promotion" (nine competencies), "Prevention and monitoring of specific groups and morbidities" (10 competencies), "Prevention and monitoring of environmental and social risk" (nine competences), "Planning and evaluation" (seven competences), "Teamwork" (five competences). Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.981, the test and the new test was p=0.851 by the Student's t-test, and the ICC was 1.0.

The validated instrument constitutes an important reference in the discussion of the work of the Community Health Agent in the current context of public health policies. In addition to supporting the role of nurses in the supervision/in-service training of these professionals.