Design and validation of a questionnaire to measure the attitudes of hospital staff concerning pandemic influenza

When pandemics lead to a higher workload in the heathcare sector, the attitude of healthcare staff and, more importantly, the ability to predict the rate of absence due to sickness are crucial factors in emergency preparedness and resource allocation. The aim of this study was to design and validate a questionnaire to measure the attitude of hospital staff toward work attendance during an influenza pandemic. An online questionnaire was designed and electronically distributed to the staff of a teaching medical institution in the United Kingdom. The questionnaire was designed de novo following discussions with colleagues at Imperial College and with reference to the literature on the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] epidemic. The questionnaire included 15 independent fact variables and 33 dependent measure variables. A total of 367 responses were received in this survey. The data from the measurement variables were not normally distributed. Three different methods [standardized residuals, Mahalanobis distance and Cook's distance] were used to identify the outliers. In all, 19 respondents [5.17%] were identified as outliers and were excluded