Health vulnerability: evidence of validity of an item bank

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the evidence of content validity and response process of a health vulnerability item bank. Methods: Psychometric study with support of Pasquali’s theoretical pole in which 62 specialists with different sociodemographic and academic characteristics were selected and 15 of them responded to the content validity questionnaire. After adjustments, the bank moved to the response process validity phase and was evaluated by 12 health service users. A content validity coefficient was used to evaluate the items and the bank, which had the reliability assessed by the binomial test, considering a percentage of 80% and p-value >0.05. Results: The bank presented good evidence of content validity by experts. The coefficients were 0.87 for the subject element, 0.86 for the social element and 0.865 for the general element. The target audience made suggestions in the response process validity phase to better understand the items (total coefficient: 0.89), which were considered clear, accurate and understandable. Conclusion: The final version of the item bank has 535 items, 238 for the subject and 297 for the social element. It presents evidence of validity of content and response process and is suitable for testing the validity of internal structure.