Development and Content Validity of a Respiratory Distress Observation Scale-Infant.

Background

Respiratory distress is one of the most commonly reported symptoms in infants in the neonatal intensive care unit and can lead to substantial morbidity and mortality if not assessed and managed appropriately. Yet, a validated scale for assessing respiratory distress across clinicians in infants is not available. Furthermore, a valid and reliable scale is needed as a dependent measure in studies about infant respiratory distress.

Objective

The purpose of this study was to establish a content validity index (CVI) of a modification of the Respiratory Distress Observation Scale© (RDOS) for use with infants who are at least 37 weeks gestational age.

Design

The RDOS© was revised using the respiratory characteristics of infants and offered to clinical experts for review. Setting/Subjects: A pool of nine experts in neonatal care, including two neonatologists, two nurse practitioners, one respiratory therapist, two staff nurses, and two nurse scientists, evaluated the revised scale for content validity.

Results

The scale CVI was calculated by averaging the item CVIs that were ≥0.80 yielding a scale CVI = 0.96. Our content experts further recommended adding the variable capillary perfusion.

Conclusions

Content validity was established. This RDOS-Infant has clinical and research utility if subsequent psychometric testing yields additional acceptable reliability and validity statistics.