The Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool©: psychometric testing of the Classical Arabic version

Abstract

This paper is a report of a study conducted to translate the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool into Arabic and to determine its psychometric properties, including reliability, validity and factorial structure. Worldwide numbers of natural and man-made disasters have greatly increased in recent years. Since disaster strikes without warning, all healthcare providers, especially nurses, must be prepared with appropriate skills and resources for disaster procedures and management during the three phases of disaster: pre disaster, during disaster and post disaster. Knowledge levels need to be evaluated to plan effective educational programmes. The Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool was translated into Classical Arabic using Beaton's guideline for translation and validated by experts and a pilot study with 20 Registered Nurses from the target population. Data were collected in 2008 using self-administered questionnaires from 474 (79% return rate) Jordanian Registered Nurses who worked in randomly selected Ministry of Health hospitals and two university hospitals. Principal component analysis (Promax rotation with Kaiser Normalization procedure, SPSS version 15) was used to determined construct validity, and three factors explained 64% of the variance: knowledge, skills and post disaster management. Cronbach's alpha was 0.90, which demonstrated internal consistency. These results support the reliability and validity of the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool as a measure of knowledge, skills and post disaster management. It can be used with confidence with an Arabic-speaking nursing population to measure their preparedness for disasters. Based on the results of such studies, effective disaster preparedness programmes could be developed to enhance nurses' disaster preparedness.