Development and validation of a questionnaire for assessment of retention of knowledge after Basic Cardiopulmonary Life Support (BCLS) training in healthcare workers.

Background and Aims: The Basic Cardiopulmonary Life Support (BCLS) guidelines have been developed to describe stepwise management of cardiac arrest victims. During the training of healthcare workers in BCLS, their retention of knowledge was assessed using a questionnaire. We describe the process of developing and validating this questionnaire to ensure that participants' knowledge is reliably measured. Methods: Based on a comprehensive literature review, 16 questions were prepared by six subject experts with mutual consensus. Face validity was done by 15 participants, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The questionnaire was sent to 10 experts for content validity, who graded the questions on four attributes: relevance, clarity, simplicity, and ambiguity. The responses were collected, and item-level and scale-level average content validity indices (I-CVI and S-CVI/Ave) were calculated, along with modified kappa statistics. I-CVI > 0.79 and S-CVI/Ave > 0.9 were considered acceptable. Results: Face validity resulted in minor language changes in three questions, and all questions were retained. In terms of content validity, the S-CVI/Ave scores were 0.99, 0.97, and 0.99. 0.97 for relevance, clarity, simplicity, and ambiguity, respectively. One question had I-CVI < 0.79 and was revised. Minor revisions and reframing of questions were done according to the experts' suggestions. All the questions demonstrated excellent kappa agreement, and the final questionnaire consisted of 16 questions. Conclusion: The questionnaire designed to assess the knowledge level of participants and retention of this knowledge after BCLS training in healthcare workers met the face and content validity criteria. This validated questionnaire can also be used to assess participants after BCLS training.