Development and Validation of a Paediatric Abusive Head Trauma Awareness Questionnaire for Healthcare Professionals: A Two‐Stage Questionnaire Development Study

Abstract

This two‐stage study aimed to develop and validate a paediatric abusive head trauma (AHT) awareness questionnaire for healthcare professionals. In stage one, an item pool was created for the AHT awareness questionnaire. Four experts assessed the content validity. Test–retest reliability and internal consistency were examined using a pilot study of 24 healthcare professionals. In stage two, 302 healthcare professionals from a medical centre in southern Taiwan were recruited to establish the questionnaire's psychometric properties. The final version of the questionnaire comprised 81 items, including demographics, attitudes towards childrearing and four sub‐concepts on AHT awareness (infant crying, soothing skills, clinical manifestations and consequences of AHT, and risk factors of AHT). The content validity of the questionnaire was satisfactory with a score of 0.91 to 1.0 for the scale content validity index. The test–retest reliability was 0.51–0.71. Cronbach's alphas for the final sample were 0.52–0.93 for the four subscales. Exploratory factor analysis extracted two factors as risk factors of AHT with a total explained variance of 55.9 per cent. This questionnaire is useful in understanding AHT awareness with identified aspects among healthcare professionals and other professionals working in child protection fields. Items and subscales of the AHT awareness questionnaire could act as a reference guide for future training programmes.‘This two‐stage study aimed to develop and validate a paediatric abusive head trauma (AHT) awareness questionnaire for healthcare professionals’Key Practitioner Messages We developed and validated a questionnaire to assess healthcare professionals' awareness of paediatric AHT. This is the first instrument developed to measure healthcare professionals' awareness of paediatric AHT with acceptable psychometric properties for use in Taiwan. The questionnaire can be used to understand healthcare professionals' awareness of paediatric AHT. This questionnaire may also be used to explore other professionals' awareness of paediatric AHT and to design related education programmes.