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Development and consensus-based validation of a comprehensive population survey instrument for municipal crisis
Andrea C Baron1, Andreas Batsios2, Laura Over-Müller2
1Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Schön Klinik, Neustadt in Holstein, Germany.
Introduction:
Valid multidimensional instruments for assessing crisis preparedness at the municipal population level are largely unavailable. Nationally representative surveys cannot provide the subnational granularity required for locally targeted civil protection planning. We developed and validated KOMPAKT112, which is, to our knowledge, the first all-hazards, multidimensional preparedness questionnaire designed for German municipal civil protection research.
Methods:
A three-round modified Delphi study (October-November 2025) was conducted with 26 interdisciplinary experts from eight domains: civil protection authorities, fire brigades, THW, aid organizations, the German Armed Forces, church communities, municipal administration, and academia. An initial 183-item pool was generated from seven preparedness frameworks, rated on a five-point Likert scale, with an a priori consensus threshold of ≥75%. Reporting followed the CREDES guidelines. External validation comprised a cognitive pre-test (n = 12, think-aloud protocol) and a population-based pretest (n = 50).
Results:
Response rates were 100% (Rounds 1-2) and 92.3% (Round 3). The item pool decreased from 183 to 132 items across 14 themes. The mean block-level consensus increased monotonically from 78.9 to 91.2%, and the mean interquartile range converged from 1.60 to 0.77. The overall Content Validity Index was 0.91 (range, 0.85-0.94), exceeding the ≥0.80 threshold across all blocks. Cognitive pretesting prompted revisions to the six blocks. The population-based pre-test confirmed score differentiation, absence of floor/ceiling effects, and a knowledge-behavior gap of 7.3 percentage points (knowledge: 76.2% vs. behavior: 68.9%). Seventy percent of the pre-test participants reported increased crisis preparedness awareness following completion.
Discussion:
KOMPAKT112 demonstrated robust content validity and is suitable for population-level municipal crisis preparedness research in Germany. Its 14-block architecture uniquely covers civil-military cooperation perception and volunteer engagement readiness, which are dimensions absent from existing instruments, including the HEPI. The instrument is freely available as Supplementary material and constitutes a promising, content-validated candidate instrument for comparative studies on municipal preparedness.
