Developing a reliable and valid questionnaire for function evaluation of Emergency Operation Centers of Medical Universities: Sequential Triangulation Method

Emergency operation centers (EOC) have been established in recent years aimed to organization and coordination in disaster times. The centers are responsible for decision-making in response and recovery phases after events. The aim of the study was developing a standard function evaluation tool for EOC. This was a mixed method study with sequential triangulation approach. All EOC in medical universities with at least one year ago establishment (in 2011)، has been studied. We measured the face and content validities. For reliability the Cronbach''s alpha was provided. The most important factors have been determined by an Explanatory factor analysis. The final tool by six domains had 38 questions. All content validities were higher than +0. 6 unless one (+0. 1). Only the activation domain had inappropriate Cronbach (0. 337) and all others were higher than 0. 7. Factor analysis reduced the questions in all domains. There reduced to five (for first domain)، two (for second and third domains) and one (for three last domains). Based on validity and reliability، it seems that the tool is appropriate for EOC'' function evaluation. The high reliability was resulted from closed correlation of questions. The good validity implied familiarity of EOC'' experts on the all asked domains.