RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire used to assess the level of general knowledge about cervical cancer, its primary and secondary prevention, and to identify sources of information about the disease among schoolgirls and female students. METHODS: The questionnaire development process was divided into four phases: generation of issues; construction of a provisional questionnaire; testing of the provisional questionnaire for acceptability and relevance; field-testing, which aimed at ensuring reliability and validity of the questionnaire. Field-testing included 305 respondents of high school female Caucasian students, who filled out the final version of the questionnaire. RESULTS: After phase 1, a list of 65 issues concerning knowledge about cervical cancer and its prevention was generated. Of 305, 155 were schoolgirls (mean age+/-SD, 17.8+/-0.5) and 150 were female students (mean age+/-SD, 21.7+/-1.8). The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaire was 0.71 (range for specific questionnaire sections, 0.60 to 0.81). Test-retest reliability ranged from 0.89 to 0.94. CONCLUSION: The Cervical-Cancer-Knowledge-Prevention-64 has been successfully developed to measure the level of knowledge about cervical cancer. The results confirm the validity, reliability and applicability of the created questionnaire.