Nursing assessment of the adaptive process in individuals with traumatic spinal cord injury: Content validation

BACKGROUND: Instruments with evidence of validity and supported by theories are necessary for nurses to perform a systematic and accurate assessment that enables clinical reasoning and assertive decision-making, especially when it comes to the process of adapting a person to traumatic spinal cord injury. OBJECTIVE: To perform content validation of the instrument "Guidelines for nursing assessment of the adaptation process of individuals with traumatic spinal cord injury". METHODS: This is a methodological study, a content validation study. The sample of expert judges was a non-probabilistic snowball sampling method, composed of 12 specialists from the clinical and academic fields of orthopedics, traumatology, and rehabilitation. Data collection was conducted using an online questionnaire via Google Forms®. RESULTS: When analyzing the I-CVI of each item in the instrument, we observed that all were equal to or greater than 0.83, demonstrating that all items reached the adopted cutoff point. Furthermore, there is a sufficiently elevated level of favorable agreement to support the content validity of each criterion and category of the evaluated instrument. CONCLUSIONS: The instrument has evidence of content validity according to item, category, and domain regarding comprehensiveness, clarity/appropriate language, pertinence, and relevance.