Development and validation of a questionnaire on knowledge and personal hygiene habits in childhood (HICORIN®)

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a questionnaire on the integral assessment of the habits and knowledge in personal hygiene in children between 7 to 12 years old in the educational, social and health environment. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study for the validation of a questionnaire. LOCATION: One primary and secondary school and one children's home in the Region of Murcia, Spain. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 86 children were included (80 from a primary and secondary school; 6 from a children's home), as well as 7 experts. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Content validation by experts; qualitative assessment; identify difficulties related to some questions, item response analysis, and test-retest reliability. RESULTS: After the literature search, 20 tools that included items related to child body hygiene were obtained. The researchers selected 34 items and drafted 48 additional ones. After content validity by the experts, the questionnaire (HICORIN®) was reduced to 63 items, and consisted of 7 dimensions of child personal hygiene (skin, hair, hands, oral, feet, ears, and intimate hygiene). After with the children some terms were adapted to improve their understanding. Only two items had non-response rates that exceeded 10%. The test-retest showed that 84.1% of the items had between very good and moderate reliability. CONCLUSIONS: HICORIN® is a reliable and valid instrument that integrally assesses the habits and knowledge in personal hygiene in children between 7-12 years old. It is applicable in educative and social and health environments and in children from different socioeconomic levels.