Development of the Attitude & Practice Towards Social Distancing Questionnaire and Evaluation of Its Validity and Reliability During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran

Abstract

Background: Social distancing is an effective way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its new variants. This study aims to develop the Attitude & Practice towards Social Distancing (APSD) Questionnaire and evaluate its validity and reliability during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Materials and Methods: This mixed-method study, used Waltz’s 4-step method to develop the APSD questionnaire. The initial items were formulated based on a semi-structured interview with the participants and social distancing guidelines. After confirming the face validity and content validity of the questionnaire, it was distributed among the participants online. Its internal consistency was assessed by calculating the Cronbach’s alpha (α). The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were carried out in SPSS software, version 16 and AMOS version 24. Finally, the reliability was evaluated using the test-retest method. Results: The preliminary draft with 33 items (15 for the attitude and 18 for the practice) were answered by 623 participants. After CFA, the final draft consisted of 7 items and three factors (CVR=0.77, CVI=0.92, α=0.73) for the attitude subscale, and 8 items and three factors for the practice subscale (CVR=1, CVI=0.98, α=0.76). Conclusion: The 15-item APSD questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate the status of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran.