Developing and Evaluating Survey Items About Women Veterans’ Care-seeking for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention

The purposes of this study were to develop and evaluate survey items designed to describe younger women veterans’ reasons for, and barriers to, care-seeking for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention. Although these women are likely to be at higher risk for CVD than comparable men, we found little research on younger women veterans and CVD prevention. With a descriptive design, eight experts rated items on clarity, relevance, comprehensiveness, and gender-sensitivity. We computed content validity indices by item and sets of items. Using cognitive interviews, we assessed women veterans’ understandings of directions and items, abilities to perform mental operations to produce responses to items, abilities to produce acceptable responses to items. The clarity and relevance of all items were 0.89 and 0.98, respectively. The average comprehensiveness and gender-sensitivity of the sets of items were 0.96 and 0.96, respectively. We revised directions and items that were difficult to understand, revised items for that were difficult to answer, and developed a new items and response options based on participants’ feedback. Spontaneous feedback during the cognitive interviews affirmed the importance of describing care-seeking for CVD prevention in this population. Researchers can use the valid survey in future research.