Validity and Reliability of Empowerment Assessment Questionnaire Addressing Families with Children at Risk for Mental Disorders

Abstract

Introduction: The present study was conducted to investigate the validity and reliability of the researcher-made questionnaire, which was designed based on the family-centered empowerment model, aiming at empowering the families with children at risk for mental disorders studying in primary schools of Isfahan, Iran. Methodology: In this study, the researcher-made questionnaire designed based on the family-centered empowerment model was used to investigate the life quality of the families participated in the empowerment programs. This 52-item questionnaire addressed two main constructs, namely perceived susceptibility and perceived severity, which were combined to form the perceived threat, self-efficacy and performance subcategories .The face and content validities of the instrument were examined with experts' contribution. Finally, the developed instrument was administered to a group of 150 subjects, who were different from the main subjects of the study. The exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate validity of the instrument. In addition, Cronbach's alpha was employed to measure the internal consistency of the questionnaire Results: All items presented scores higher than 0.79. Content validity was calculated to quantify the content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI). The mean value of the content validity index was 0.91. The overall reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.79. The value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test was 0.83. Conclusion: The obtained findings suggest that the empowerment assessment questionnaire addressing families with children at risk for mental disorder can be used in similar programs as a valid and reliable instrument.