The Development of Forensic Entomology Questionnaire for Health-related Undergraduate Students from Universiti Teknologi MARA

Abstract

Forensic entomology research in Malaysia started in the 1950s but research in this field is still scarce and limited to a few institutions. The objective of this study is to develop and validate a selfconstructed questionnaire of the knowledge and perception of forensic entomology. A cross-sectional validation study among health-related undergraduate students was conducted at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Selangor, Malaysia. The knowledge and perception questionnaire on forensic entomology underwent a content development and validation process through a pilot and a fieldtesting study. Psychometric properties have been explored using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation, scree plot, eigenvalues, Monte Carlo simulation, suppress small coefficients value below 0.40, communalities, inter-item correlation, internal consistency, and test-retest analyses. The content of the knowledge and perception questionnaire for forensic entomology were conceptually equivalent. The questionnaire was refined after face validation by five students. The pilot testing was conducted on 30 students. The refined version was then field-tested among 232 students. The KaiserMeyer-Olkin KMO test was 0.868, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was ≤ 0.001, indicating sampling adequacy. Two factors were identified which are knowledge and perception. The Cronbach’s alpha for knowledge and perception was 0.939 and 0.819, respectively. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) ranged from 0.493 to 0.923. The knowledge and perception questionnaire for forensic entomology is valid, reliable, and fairly stable over time. This questionnaire could be used to evaluate the levels of knowledge and perception on forensic entomology among undergraduate students in Malaysia.