Psychometric properties of the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool (DPET) Thai version among Thai registered nurses

Abstract

Nurses are the largest professional group in healthcare, and play a significant role in disaster management. Knowledge about nursing skills in disaster preparedness is needed to improve understanding and provide appropriate interventions for the nursing workforce. However, there is no standardized tool to evaluate disaster preparedness among Thai nurses. This study therefore aimed to translate the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool (DPET) into Thai and examine the psychometric properties of the translated version. The study had two phases. Phase 1 consisted of the back-translation and monolingual test for cross-cultural aspects. Phase 2 consisted of expert testing for internal consistency and content validity, and exploratory factor analysis. Cluster random sampling and stratified random sampling were used to provide a sample of 770 registered Thai nurses to complete the instrument. Content validity was assessed by five experts, resulting in a good content validity index. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.973. The item analysis showed that 45 items had an acceptable internal consistency using the corrected item–total correlations. One item was deleted. Construct validity was determined using exploratory factor analysis. It found six factors: post-disaster management, disaster skills, knowledge of preparedness, knowledge specific to response, acquiring disaster education, and sources of disaster knowledge. These factors explained 67.134% of the total variance. The psychometric properties indicated that the Thai version of the DPET had adequate reliability and validity to evaluate the level of disaster preparedness among Thai nurses. The instrument should be tested further to ensure standardization.