Psychometric properties of attitude questionnaire to prayer: construction, development, validity and reliability

Development and psychometric properties of an instrument in general health should be methodologically strong and follow standard procedures. An important factor of mental health is praying. The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire for assessing student's attitude towards prayer.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on 500 students in the Jan. 2017 at the University of Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences (USWRS). The first draft of the prayer questionnaire (68 items) was based on literature review. To ensure content validity and face validity, the research panel team examined the questionnaire and the items were reduced to 33. Thereafter the questionnaire was tested by 9 students and also an expert panel team (10 persons) examined face and content validity. Then construct validity, internal consistency, and test- retest reliability of were assessed. Finally, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was used to assess the predictive ability of the attitude questionnaire and to inform the choice of a cut-off point. Data analysis was carried out using SPSS 21 software.
18 items were omitted based on the content validity ratio (CVR Our finding showed that the students’ attitude questionnaire with 22 items provided a reliable and valid tool to detect attitude of students towards praying. This questionnaire can be used in other universities in Iran.