Behavior, social and economic impact of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals: Development and validation of COVID-19 Responses Impact Questionnaire (COVRiQ).

ABSTRACT

As the world goes through the fourth wave and the continued emergence of new COVID-19 variants, the general and work-related risks of healthcare professionals are expected to rise. This has the capacity to adversely affect productivity and efficiency in the healthcare delivery system, particularly in this era of global shortage of trained healthcare professionals. We aimed to develop and validate a new instrument known as the COVID-19 Responses Impact Questionnaire (COVRiQ) to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare professionals managing the COVID-19 pandemic. This methodological study involved three steps: the formulation of the COVRiQ draft, content and face validation, and construct validity. A total of 61 questions were drafted with 3-point Likert scale answers. From the list, 39 were rated valid by a panel of experts and subsequently tested on 301 participants. The results were analyzed and validated using exploratory factor analysis on SPSS. Components were extracted and questions with low factor loading were removed. The internal consistency was measured with Cronbach's alpha. Following analysis, three components were extracted and named as behavioral, social, and economic impacts. In general, 29 items were deleted leaving 32 out of 61 questions retained as the final validated COVRiQ. Internal consistency showed high reliability with Cronbach's alpha of 0.91. Participants scored a total cumulative mean of 118.74 marks. A subanalysis by occupation showed that medical assistants scored the lowest in the group with a score of 22.3% whereas medical specialists scored the highest at 77.7%. Higher score indicates higher impact of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals. The new COVRiQ consisting of 32 items demonstrated to be user friendly with good psychometric properties and valid for assessing the impacts of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals.