Development and validation of occupational therapists knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire in activities of daily living among individuals with hand injury

Aim of the study:

To develop and validate the occupational therapists knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire in activities of daily living among individuals with hand injuries.

Justification for study:

In a country as diverse as India, values and beliefs underlying an individual’s culture are known to influence the ADLs they engage in their daily life, and for those individuals, ADL is important; so far, there is no information regarding the Indian occupational therapist practices. These ADLs are important domains an occupational therapist addresses during their treatment. Hence, there is a need

Tools used:

An online questionnaire will be developed to assess the occupational therapists’ knowledge, attitude, and practice in activities of daily living among individuals with hand injuries.

The questionnaire will consist of four sections: demographics, knowledge, attitude, and practice

Detailed description of procedure:

The study will be conducted in three phases.

In Phase I, after the approval from the IEC, the KAP questionnaire will be developed based on the literature review focusing on three main areas: occupational therapy, hand injury, and activities of daily living. The questionnaire will consist of four sections: demographics, knowledge, attitude, and practice. After that, content and construct validation will be done.

In Phase II, for content validation, occupational therapists and psychologists from India will be selected through personal contacts and college websites and they will be contacted through email. Initially, ten occupational therapists from India will be selected, among them the first five occupational therapists, who have a minimum five years of clinical experience in adult hand injuries, and one psychologist will review the questionnaire. Links to the consent and validation forms will be emailed with instructions. A four-week response period will be allowed, with weekly reminders. If needed, additional experts will be selected from the remaining five therapists. Feedback will be collected, and the questionnaire will be revised accordingly.

In Phase III, for construct validity, occupational therapists will be selected from the AIOTA website, colleges, and LinkedIn profiles and through a snowball sampling method. The sample size will include 149 occupational therapists from India, selected using convenience and snowball sampling methods. Occupational therapists who treat hand injuries will be eligible to participate. The Exploratory factor analysis will analyze construct validity. Google Forms will format the KAP questionnaire and consent form links, distributed via social media and email. Recipients of the forms will be encouraged further to distribute them among other occupational therapists. Data will be collected in Excel sheets and analyzed using JAMOVI software (version 2.3).

The categorical variables in the study will be described using frequency tables and percentages. The numerical variables will be assessed using mean and standard deviation or median and interquartile range subject to assessments of skewness. Two-sample independent t-test/one-way ANOVA or its non-parametric variants (subject to violation of normality and homogeneity of variance assumption) will be used to facilitate comparisons of the outcome characteristics across groups. The reliability statistics will be assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and construct validity will be measured using Factor Analysis. The Content Validity Index will enable us to assess the content validity of the structured questionnaire developed in the study.  All statistical analysis will be carried out at 5% level of significance, 80% power using Jamovi 2.3.28