Onboarding in Health Care-Content Validity and Reliability of the Danish Onboarding Questionnaire (DOQ-34).

INTRODUCTION: During recent years, health care organizations have paid increasing attention to onboarding because of recruitment challenges. Organizational initiatives are frequently monitored and evaluated using questionnaire data, and to produce high-quality data, reliable instruments are paramount. We aimed to investigate the content validity and reliability of the Danish Onboarding Questionnaire, including cognitive interviewing and test-retest analyses.

METHOD: We investigated content validity, including face validity and the content validity index, and reliability for the percentage of agreement. To analyze the cognitive interview data, thematic analysis was applied, followed by the question-and-answer model to categorize the problems revealed. To test reliability, the percentage of agreement was calculated with an accepted deviation of 1 on test-retest data.

RESULTS: Regarding the mental processes, multiple items were identified to be challenged regarding comprehension (clarification of concepts and understanding), judgment (ambiguity and relevance), and response (anonymity and personal information). The mental process retrieval was not represented. The subscale content validity index/Ave was found to be 0.935, representing a "good" level of content validity. With an accepted deviation of 1, the mean agreement was 97.7%.

DISCUSSION: Questionnaire items causing uncertainties or challenges are potential sources of deteriorated content validity and should be revised. We suggest that the Danish Onboarding Questionnaire-34 undergo an item reduction, which might increase its validity and reliability.