The results of the pre-test, field test and expert consultations, respectively, were pooled and evaluated by a sub-group within the HLS-EU consortium (KS, JP, SvdB, ZS, GD) supplemented with input from the collaborative partner (RO). Items that did not fit well within the conceptual model and rationale of the questionnaire or which did not have direct or indirect relevance to the twelve sub-domains were eliminated. Items that were only indirectly associated to the rationale of the questionnaire were combined with other items. Proposed objective items such as questions related to concrete knowledge were discharged due to cultural discrepancies among the participating countries. Instead, it was decided only to include self-reporting items, similar to the practice of Chew et al. [27 (link)]. Hence, the format of all items was changed from ‘statements’ to ‘questions’, and their formulation standardized so that all would assess the difficulty of a specific health relevant task, i.e.: “On a scale from very difficult to very easy, how easy would you say it is to …followed by the question to be answered on a Likert-type scale ranging from “very easy”, “easy”, “difficult” or “very difficult”. An answer category was added as “I don’t know”, which was only to be used by the interviewer. While it was ensured that the reformulated items stayed true to the original content, some new items were added, although not tested, to replace items that had been eliminated during the ‘culling’. This procedure resulted in a pre-final version of the questionnaire
Free full text: Click here
