The HIV-Knowledge Questionnaire: Development and Evaluation of a Reliable, Valid, and Practical Self-Administered Questionnaire

Abstract

We have developed and evaluated a self-administered questionnaire of knowledge about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection for use in program evaluation. Formative work led to the development of the 62-item HIV-Knowledge Questionnaire (HIV-K-Q), which was administered to 409 women and 227 men. Item analyses resulted in the deletion of 17 items that were either too easy or did not correlate well with the total score. Factor analysis on the remaining 45 items resulted in a single factor labeled HIV Knowledge. The generalizability of this one-factor solution was confirmed with data from 285 women and 76 men. Reliability analyses revealed that the HIV-K-Q is internally consistent (alpha = .91) and stable over 1-week (r = .83), 2-week (r = .91), and 12-week (r = .90) intervals. Evidence for the validity of the HIV-K-Q was assembled using known groups and treatment outcome analyses. Additional evidence emerged from analyses that revealed associations between scores on the HIV-K-Q and two related knowledge measures, and between HIV-K-Q scores and level of educational attainment. Discriminant evidence was obtained through nonsignificant relationships between the HIV-K-Q and potentially biasing constructs, including social desirability. The HIV-K-Q requires a sixth-grade education, and 7 min to complete. The HIV-K-Q is a reliable, valid, and practical measure of HIV-related knowledge that can be used with low-literacy adults.