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Design and validation of the survey of knowledge, attitudes and practices of Chagas disease

Abstract:

Chagas disease is considered a neglected condition worldwide which mainly affects the poor population in Latin America, with approximately 10 million people affected. It is estimated that in Ecuador more than 200,000 people are seropositive for T. cruzi and 4,400 acquire the infection annually. Studies have been carried out in endemic areas such as Loja, Manabí, Guayas and El Oro, which constitute the habitat of five species of triatomics, responsible for the vector transmission of the disease, however, updated epidemiological information is required in areas considered priority. For this reason, a cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out to design and validate a questionnaire on knowledge, attitudes and practices of Chagas disease in the 5 priority areas in Ecuador. An initial questionnaire of 36 items was designed, used for a pilot study with 5 key experts who validated said instrument. To evaluate the content validity, Aiken's V (0.82) was used and the validity of the construct was evaluated through the exploratory factor analysis, from which 3 dimensions were obtained; While the Cronbach's alpha test (> 0.7) demonstrated the internal consistency of the instrument. The final version of the questionnaire containing 31 items was applied to 20 participants with different epidemiological characteristics from each priority area, showing that it meets all the validation and reliability conditions and can be applied in other epidemiological studies related to Chagas disease.