Politicians’ view on their role in promoting health – developing a questionnaire

Abstract

Abstract Background Although the political context is recognized as an important determinant of health, there is limited research on politicians' role in health promotion. No fitting questionnaire to study the subject could be identified, therefore a new questionnaire was developed. Methods An inductive approach was used and the first step was semi-structured interviews with six politicians. They represented two different municipalities and four different political parties from different sides of the Swedish political spectrum. The interviews focused on the politicians’ view on their role, responsibility and possibility to promote health. The data was analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. Five categories were created with several sub-categories each. The categories formed the sections of the questionnaire. Statements and questions were created to cover all the sub-categories. The statements were assigned Likert-scales (strongly agree to strongly disagree) for answers and some of the sentences were turned into questions. Lastly, face validity of the questionnaire was tested by the interviewees who filled out the questionnaires, two by thinking aloud as they did and three by filling out the online version of the questionnaire and leaving comments on the questionnaire. Results This resulted in a questionnaire with five sections focused on: Politicians view on health and health promotion; to affect health as a politician; collaboration between actors; the politics of health; the municipality/region organisation and prerequisites. Conclusions The questionnaire opens up for explorative studies on politicians' view on their role, responsibility and possibility to promote health. It is currently being used in a study exploring local and regional politicians in the north of Sweden and their role in health promotion. Key messages Politicians’ view on their role in health promotion is of importance to explore. The developed questionnaire can be used to study politicians’ role in health promotion.