Abstract
Background: To develop and psychometrically assess a multiple choice question (MCQ) instrument to test knowledge of depression and its treatments in patients suffering from depression. Methods: A total of 63 depressed patients and twelve psychiatric experts participated. Based on empirical evidence from an extensive review, theoretical knowledge and in consultations with experts, 27-item MCQ knowledge of depression and its treatment test was constructed. Data collected from the psychiatry experts were used to assess evidence of content validity for the instrument. Results: Cronbach's alpha of the instrument was 0.68, and there was an overall 87.8% agreement (items are highly relevant) between experts about the relevance of the MCQs to test patient knowledge on depression and its treatments. There was an overall satisfactory patients' performance on the MCQs with 78.7% correct answers. Results of an item analysis indicated that most items had adequate difficulties and discriminations. Conclusion: There was adequate reliability and evidence for content and convergent validity for the instrument. Future research should employ a lager and more heterogeneous sample from both psychiatrist and community samples, than did the present study. Meanwhile, the present study has resulted in psychometrically tested instruments for measuring knowledge of depression and its treatment of depressed patients.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 56 |
| Pages (from-to) | 56 |
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Journal | BMC Psychiatry |
| Volume | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 15 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This is supported by two main factors. First, the MCQ test was initially developed based on empirical evidence from extensive literature review, and from consultations with experts in the field of depression. Second, from assessment of the instrument, there was 88% overall agreement among experts on the relevancy of its contents to measure patient knowledge of depression and its treatments with the means very high (4.4) for highly relevant.