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Scale Development and Psychometric Evaluation of a Questionnaire for Measuring the Risk Factors for Death in Floods

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Abstract

Purpose

Determination of the causes of flood-related deaths is the precondition for effective interventions aimed at the reduction of such deaths. There is a gap in the design and the development of a valid and reliable instrument for measuring underlying factors of death in the flood.

Methods

This study was carried out in two phases. In the first phase, item pool generation and questionnaire design were carried out through systematic review of literature and qualitative study. the initial questionnaire was divided into two parts of objective and subjective factors. In the second phase, the psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire included face, content, and construct validity in the subjective part. The reliability was also evaluated by calculating test–retest intraclass correlation coefficient and Cronbach’s alpha. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used for the data collected from 369 individuals in the flood-affected communities experiencing flood deaths. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 23.

Results

In the EFA, 33 items and seven dimensions were extracted that explained 57.82% of the variance of influential factors in flood death, including the cognition of the flood (four items), general knowledge (four items), public beliefs (four items), risk perception (nine items), attitude (five items), prevention (five items), and social norms (two items). The internal consistency of the instrument using Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.92. Finally, in order to perform the stability test, the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for all questions. This was above .05 and acceptable.

Conclusions

According to the results, the factors affecting flood death questionnaire (FAFDQ) could be used to make decisions, identify groups at risk of flood-related deaths, and implement flood-related death-reduction interventions. Indeed, these measures have led to the development of a comprehensive and reliable questionnaire for measuring the factors affecting flood deaths.

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Abbreviations

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

FAFDQ:

Factors Affecting Flood Death Questionnaire

SFAFDQ:

Subjective Factors Affecting Flood Death Questionnaire

CVI:

Content Validity Index

CVR:

Content Validity Ratio

PCC:

Pearson Correlation Coefficient

KMO:

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin

EFA:

Exploratory Factor Analysis

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Vice-Chancellor of Research Affairs at the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. Moreover, the authors would like to thank all participants of the study who gave us their precious time.

Funding

This study was funded by Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The authors appreciate the financial support of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in IRAN.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Research Institute for Health Development, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran

    Arezoo Yari, Yadolah Zarezadeh & Farzam Bidarpoor

  2. Department of Health in Emergencies and Disasters, School of Medicine, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran

    Arezoo Yari

  3. Department of Climate Change and Health, Institute for Environmental Research, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran

    Arezoo Yari & Abbas Ostadtaghizadeh

  4. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran

    Abbas Rahimiforoushani

  5. Department of Health in Emergencies and Disasters, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR, Iran

    Ali Ardalan & Abbas Ostadtaghizadeh

  6. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

    Mohsen Soufi Boubakran

Authors
  1. Arezoo Yari
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  2. Yadolah Zarezadeh
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  7. Abbas Ostadtaghizadeh
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Contributions

A.Y., Y.Z., and A.A. researched the background for the project and were the primary writers of the manuscript with the guidance of A.OT., and A.RF., A.Y., M.SB. and F.B. analyzed and interpreted the data. A.OT., and A.Y. edited the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abbas Ostadtaghizadeh.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committees of the Tehran Universities of Medical Sciences (Iran) IR.TUMS.VCR.REC.1397.204. The participants were previously informed about the characteristics of the study. Informed consent form was obtained from all participants. They were all asked to complete a questionnaire and to provide signed consent to confirm the participation in the study.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Yari, A., Zarezadeh, Y., Rahimiforoushani, A. et al. Scale Development and Psychometric Evaluation of a Questionnaire for Measuring the Risk Factors for Death in Floods. J Environ Health Sci Engineer 20, 521–533 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-022-00798-y

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