Assessing Heart Failure Self-management Knowledge Through Vignettes.

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Health Psychology
• Nursing Education

Background:

• Self-care is crucial for managing heart failure (HF) symptoms.
• Existing HF knowledge assessments risk social desirability bias.
• Vignettes can mitigate bias by assessing knowledge through fictional scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and test the content validity of vignettes for measuring HF symptom self-management knowledge.

Main Methods:

• Two vignettes were created: one for psychological symptoms (anxiety, depression) and one for physical symptoms (edema, fatigue).
• Readability was improved by researchers and lay experts.
• Five HF self-care nurse experts evaluated vignette clarity and importance using Delphi methods and a Likert scale.

Main Results:

• The scale-level content validity index was 0.92 for psychological and 0.94 for physical symptom vignettes after two Delphi rounds.
• These scores indicate excellent initial content validity.

Conclusions:

• Vignettes demonstrate valid content for assessing HF symptom self-management knowledge, according to nurse experts.
• Vignettes provide a promising, low-pressure method to evaluate HF self-care knowledge.