Developing and psychometric testing of the evaluation tool for disaster exercises design stage: A mixed method study.

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Disaster Management
• Health Systems

Background:

• Disaster exercises are crucial for health sector disaster risk management.
• Developing effective evaluation tools for exercise design is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a tool for evaluating disaster exercises at the design stage within the health sector.

Main Methods:

• A mixed-methods approach combining qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (validity, reliability testing) phases.
• Systematic review for item pool generation and expert review for face and content validity.
• Reliability assessed using Cronbach's alpha and intra-class correlation coefficient.

Main Results:

• Four main categories and eleven subcategories were identified, forming the basis of the tool.
• An initial pool of 164 items was reduced to 50 validated items.
• The tool demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89, ICC = 0.72).

Conclusions:

• The study presents a novel categorization for evaluating health sector disaster exercises.
• The validated 50-item tool offers a reliable and valid method for assessing disaster exercise design in healthcare.