Brief adult respiratory system health status scale-community version (BARSHSS-CV): developing and evaluating the reliability and validity

BACKGROUND: The evaluation of respiratory system health status in hospitalized patients is usually based on many laboratory examinations and imaging examinations. Medical examinations require a lot of manpower, material resources, financial resources, and may cause a certain degree of mechanical damage and radiation damage. It is not easily used widely and economically to assess the respiratory health status of community adults. Therefore, researchers developed a brief adult respiratory system health status scale-community version (BARSHSS-CV) and tested its reliability and validity. METHODS: Using clinical characteristics and pathogenic factors of respiratory system diseases as a theoretical basis and through reference to relevant literature, researchers developed an initial scale. A randomized cluster sampling strategy was used to recruit adults in the communities of Baoding City, Shijiazhuang City, Cangzhou city and Chifeng City in China. Researchers randomly selected 1 district from each city. Subsequently, 4 communities were respectively randomly selected from 4 districts. Then, researchers conducted the questionnaire survey in 4 communities. Finally, researchers investigated 615 community adults. 584 valid questionnaires were recovered. By applying exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, content validity index, Cronbach’s α coefficient, mean inter-item correlation coefficient and test-retest reliability, researchers tested the reliability and validity of scale and created the final BARSHSS-CV. RESULTS: BARSHSS-CV Cronbach’s α=0.951, content validity = 0.933, test-retest reliability = 0.963 and factor cumulative contribution rate = 67.168% by exploratory factor analysis. By confirmatory factor analysis, Chi square value (χ2) was 442.117, degrees of freedom (df) was 161, Chi square value/degrees of freedom (χ2 /df) was 2.746, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.065, goodness of fit index (GFI) was 0.902, incremental fit index (IFI) was 0.955, comparative fit index (CFI) was 0.955, normed fit index (NFI) was 0.931, Tueker-Lewis index (TLI) was 0.947. BARSHSS-CV consisted of 20 items and 3 dimensions. CONCLUSIONS: BARSHSS-CV with good test-retest reliability and content/construct validity is a brief and economical tool for assessing the state of respiratory system amongst adult communities. BARSHSS-CV may help medical staff in community primary medical institutions quickly, conveniently and economically assess the status of respiratory system and the main problems of respiratory system in community adults. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3505-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.