A validated instrument to assess dentists’ knowledge about diabetes

Abstract

Aim: To elaborate and validate an instrument for Brazilian Portuguese speakers, to assess dentists’ knowledge about care of patients with diabetes mellitus (Dental-Diabetes). Methods: Methodological study comprising four stages: a) Elaboration of instrument; b) Content validation (computing Content Validity Index - CVI) based on Expert Committee assessment; c) Pre-test with 30 dentists, followed by assessment of suggestions by Expert Committee; d) Psychometric validation through instrument application in a sample of 127 dentists by means of the web tool e-Surv. Cronbach’s alpha and intraclass correlation coefficients were used to evaluate, respectively, internal consistency and reproducibility. Results: The final version of the instrument consists of 22 questions (7 on sociodemographic data and 15 querying dentists’ knowledge) and those submitted for validation attained a CVI of 0.95 [95% CI 0.916-0,981], showing satisfactory internal consistency, with 0.794 Cronbach’s alpha [95% CI 0.741-0.842] and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.799 [95% CI: 0.746-0.846] between the test and retest scores. Conclusions: Dental-Diabetes is a comprehensive instrument, culturally adequate and validated to assess dentists’ knowledge about care of patients with diabetes.