Development and validation of behavioral and health sciences research instrument

Abstract

Instruments development and validation are critical to research endeavour in social, behavioural and health sciences. This study provides a systematic review of published researches on instrument development, evaluate the current practice and limitations in the process. To achieve this objective published research works were search and selected in February, 2019 from four academic databases: PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science and Google scholar, with the search terms as ‘instrument development and validation’, ‘item development’ and ‘construction of questionnaire’ there was no restrictions at initial stage. At the end of the selection process, 25 published works between 2010 to 2019 were evaluated. The analysis of the reviewed studies was done based on the stated objective current practice and identified limitations. The results showed that, the item generation, theoretical analysis or item review and psychometric analysis were the common basic steps adopted by scholars when developing research instrument. With regards to the limitations in the process, the study identified three main limitations; sample characteristic related limitation, Methodological and psychometric limitations. In view of these findings, as significant number of the reviewed studies were reported to have methodological and sample related weaknesses. Thus, this systematic review can serve as an important reference point for scholars to ensure adequate attention are paid to the methodological elements when developing and validating research instruments adequate for making valid inferences to inform policy making and implementations.