Development and validation of knowledge of caring for COVID‐19 tool

Albarwani, Saada; Almaskari, Mohammed A.; Alalawi, Salwa Saleh; Almaskari, Turkiya Saleh; Alshidi, Amal Said

AIM: We aimed to examine the validity and reliability of a newly developed tool that measures nursing and allied health students’ knowledge of caring for patients with COVID‐19. METHOD: We developed in five phases (literature review, item development, expert evaluation using content validity index, revisions based on a pilot test, and exploratory factor and reliability analyses on the data from the main study). We administered online surveys (the pilot test & the main study using a cross‐sectional design) to students in a governmental health sciences college in Oman. RESULTS: The pilot test had 43 participants, and the main study had 507. The item content validity index scores ranged from 0.81–1.00, and the scale content validity index for 20 items was 0.95. The factor analysis revealed a three‐factor solution. The overall Cronbach’s alpha for the final (19‐item) version of the tool after item deletion was 0.76. The reliabilities for Subscales 1, 2, and 3 were 0.83, 0.67, and 0.51, respectively.