Validity and consistency of a questionnaire that measures: factors associated with health, academic and professional performance of medical residents of Mexico

Abstract

Even when there are different means to measure the quality of an instrument, there is few information on validated instruments that measure: factors associated with health, academic and professional performance of resident physicians. The objective was to estimate the validity and reliability of an instrument that measures these factors. A questionnaire was designed with 109 items obtained from a systematic review of various questionnaires. Content validity was through Expert Judgment. Sending to 20 experienced experts, following the Career procedure (2003 in 2011). Likewise, it was applied to a pilot group of 16 resident physicians to measure reliability and consistency using Alpha de Cronbach (Hernández-Sampieri et al., 2013). The results of the expert judgment analysis showed that 21 items had to be modified because they presented indexes of univocity and relevance of ≤.79 and ≥.60. One item was eliminated because it presented values ​​of ≤.59. With respect to the results of the consistency analysis, 64 items were modified by presenting item-total correlation values ​​of <30. In the same way, six items were eliminated because they presented negative values. Cronbach's alpha was 0.82. Therefore, it was necessary to apply it to a larger population of 212 resident physicians, obtaining an α = 0.94.  Conclusion: There is a valid questionnaire, with a good internal consistency that allows objectively measuring the factors associated with health that affect the academic and professional performance of resident physicians.