Development and Validation of Health Education Tools and Evaluation Questionnaires for Improving Patient Care in Lifestyle Related Diseases

Abstract

Lifestyle related diseases continue to be a significant burden on the health care system. Health education is a combination of educational strategies that promote voluntary adoption of healthy lifestyle choices and dietary behaviour. The use of simple and validated education and evaluation tools is now increasing in routine clinical practice to aid health status evaluation and communication between the patient, dietitian and the health care provider. Development of effective health education materials is a systematic process which starts with setting up the goals for education, followed by literature review and focus group discussion, content selection, designing the rough draft, seeking expert comments and validation. Questionnaire development should follow a logical and structured approach. Item generation should be based on extensive literature search and target group participation. Validation by the experts makes the questionnaire more meaningful, trustworthy and applicable. Considerable effort goes into designing and testing of these tools in order to ensure that they are effective. For enhancing clinical, dietetic and educational practice, it is pertinent to learn the process of developing these tools scientifically.