Caregivers’ knowledge and attitude scale towards drug: development and validation

Background: Drug abuse is a prevalent issue in society, often used to reduce stress and improve mental health. It is often seen as a personal disorder, causing harm to users and their loved ones. In today’s globalized world, society strives for better care, emphasizing the importance of solving problems and emphasizing the role of caregivers in supporting drug addicts. Methods: A standardized knowledge and attitude scale was developed to assess 60 caregivers of drug addicts in Kolkata, India. The scale was self-administered and tested at 21-day intervals. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient method was applied for questionnaire validity. The scale was used to eliminate poor items and ensure reliability. Results: The tool primarily consists of twenty-two (22) knowledge and twenty-two (22) attitude items towards drug. Following item analysis, four (4) distracting items from the knowledge scale are dropped in accordance with the difficulty index and discrimination index. The discrimination indices from the attitude scale were used to eliminate 1 distracting item. As a result, 18 items for the knowledge scale and 21 items for the attitude scale were retained. The knowledge and attitude tools’ final form has found high significant correlation. Conclusions: The study explained how to create a standardized scale with good items and significant reliability to evaluate knowledge and attitude towards drug addicts.

Adoption and standardization of attitude scale for polio framed on oversees population from underdeveloped area of West Bengal

Background: Study revealed fear from polio vaccination programme yet not completely has eradicated from the minds of immigrated communities resides in backward areas of Bengal. Due that, pre-established attitude tool was adopted for the formation of new tool for targeted population. Methods: Interestingly, attitude tool found almost similar result after 5 years of its first administration (on minorities). Foundation of tool was set on 3-point Likert type scaling style. Classical test theory (CTT) was followed in which popularity index and discrimination index were taken for item-analysis for pilot study. Results: CTT rejects 6 items and test-retest reliability with high r value 0.94 suggests the tool has excellent reliability. Standardized tool finally comes in 31 items with 9 different dimensions. Conclusions: CTT method as handy method for small sample item-analysis where popularity index and discrimination index used to refine values on which item-total correlation was administered on Pearson抯 correlation at 99% confidence interval. Application of the same tool after some years in CTT method in constructing attitude tool have successfully applied.

Impact of educational status on AIDS awareness and attitude: a micro study of Krishnanagar City.

The study was carried out at Krishnanagar city of Nadia District, West Bengal on aims to focus the HIV/AIDS related awareness and attitudes. A total of 400 samples divided into illiterate, primary, secondary and higher educated people (100 from each group) were surveyed using "5-point Likert Scale" consisting of two parts-Part-I for measuring attitude and Part-II for measuring awareness. The data were collected at the end of 1999 and analyzed using SPSS computer programme. Results revealed subjects of any categories of people in general were not aware and shows negative attitude towards AIDS. Significant differences were existed among the categories except between illiterate & primary and secondary & higher educated group of people about awareness and attitude towards AIDS.