Pesticide applicators questionnaire content validation: A fuzzy delphi method
- Author:
Sujith Kumar Manakandan
;
Rosnah Ismail
;
Mohd Ridhuan Mohd Jamil
;
Priya Ragunat
- Publication Type:Original Article
- Keywords:
Fuzzy Delphi;
survey questionnaire;
validation;
noise exposure;
chemical exposure
- From:
The Medical Journal of Malaysia
2017;72(4):228-235
- CountryMalaysia
- Language:English
-
Abstract:
survey questionnaire is deciding the appropriate items in a
construct. Retaining irrelevant items and removing
important items will certainly mislead the direction of a
particular study. This article demonstrates Fuzzy Delphi
method as one of the scientific analysis technique to
consolidate consensus agreement within a panel of experts
pertaining to each item's appropriateness. This method
reduces the ambiguity, diversity, and discrepancy of the
opinions among the experts hence enhances the quality of
the selected items. The main purpose of this study was to
obtain experts' consensus on the suitability of the preselected
items on the questionnaire.
Methods: The panel consists of sixteen experts from the
Occupational and Environmental Health Unit of Ministry of
Health, Vector-borne Disease Control Unit of Ministry of
Health and Occupational and Safety Health Unit of both
public and private universities. A set of questionnaires
related to noise and chemical exposure were compiled
based on the literature search. There was a total of six
constructs with 60 items in which three constructs for
knowledge, attitude, and practice of noise exposure and
three constructs for knowledge, attitude, and practice of
chemical exposure. The validation process replicated
recent Fuzzy Delphi method that using a concept of
Triangular Fuzzy Numbers and Defuzzification process.
Results: A 100% response rate was obtained from all the
sixteen experts with an average Likert scoring of four to five.
Post FDM analysis, the first prerequisite was fulfilled with a
threshold value (d) ≤ 0.2, hence all the six constructs were
accepted. For the second prerequisite, three items (21%)
from noise-attitude construct and four items (40%) from
chemical-practice construct had expert consensus lesser
than 75%, which giving rise to about 12% from the total
items in the questionnaire. The third prerequisite was used
to rank the items within the constructs by calculating the
average fuzzy numbers. The seven items which did not fulfill
the second prerequisite similarly had lower ranks during the
analysis, therefore those items were discarded from the final
draft.
Conclusion: Post FDM analysis, the experts' consensus on
the suitability of the pre-selected items on the questionnaire set were obtained, hence it is now ready for further
construct validation process.
