Abstract 9394: Establishing Validity of a Midlife Black Women's Wellness Program

Abstract

Introduction: Expert ratings and qualitative feedback are essential for establishing validity of materials developed for interventions. Validation of intervention content should be established prior to initiation of trials. In collaboration with a community research advisory board, the purpose of this study was to analyze expert ratings and qualitative feedback for the Midlife Black Women’s Stress Reduction Wellness (B-SWELL) intervention materials. Methods: The B-SWELL is a culturally tailored 8-week program that leverages stress reduction to lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in midlife Black women by promoting the adoption of the AHA’s Life’s Simple 7 healthy lifestyle behaviors (LS7). Using community participatory methods, the LS7 metrics and B-SWELL binder were culturally tailored and targeted to midlife Black women. A multilevel mixed methods approach was used to establish content and face validity for the B-SWELL binder made up of eight modules. Twelve experts consisting of midlife Black women (n=6), researchers (n=3), and integrative health specialists (n=3) were purposefully recruited to rate each B-SWELL module and the overall binder for content accuracy, topic relevance, stress relevance, cultural appropriateness, feasibility, usefulness, ease of use, and appeal using a 5-point Likert scale (1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree). Open ended questions were integrated with ratings to obtain insight into areas needing improvement. Results: Combined mean expert ratings for individual B-SWELL modules were high with means ranging between 4.43 and 4.66. Group ratings differed for individual B-SWELL modules and the B-SWELL binder with midlife Black women having the highest mean ratings (4.71, 4.97), followed by researchers (4.56, 4.73), and integrative health specialists (4.11, 4.40). Narrative data provided details to guide refinement. Conclusions: The B-SWELL intervention materials exhibited strong evidence of content and face validity. Testing feasibility of the B-SWELL intervention in a future study is warranted, ultimately leading to a well-powered randomized control clinical trial to test efficacy of the B-SWELL in lowering CVD risk in midlife Black women through adoption of the LS7 healthy lifestyle behaviors.