Development of a Valid and Reliable Questionnaire to Identify Ethical Concerns Among Health-Care Professionals Regarding HIV Testing in Different Scenarios

Background: Regarding HIV testing, there are differing opinions and approaches among healthcare professionals due to the ethical dilemmas associated with HIV. Ethical dilemma often encounters in situations such as, a person with risk of HIV infection refuses voluntary HIV testing before marriage, may transmit infection to his/her spouse. In this case, if one principle of ethics, 'autonomy' of the individual is followed then another principle of ethics, 'beneficence' to the spouse is violated and vice-versa. Whatever ethical decision is made, one individual or group is always going to be affected and justice should be done with this individual or group as well. Objectives: To develop a valid and reliable questionnaire regarding ethical dilemmas associated with HIV testing in different scenarios. Methods: Item generation, item reduction, item scaling, cognitive interview testing and pretesting were used. The questionnaire was reviewed by experts and was distributed twice to the participants at 15-days intervals to calculate Cronbach's alpha and Intra-class correlation. Result: The questionnaire was found to be valid and reliable with overall Cronbach's alpha as 0.802. Intra-class correlation scores for each question in both test and retest were correlated. Conclusion: A valid and reliable questionnaire has been developed which can be used to achieve a consensus on controversial ethical issues associated with HIV testing in different scenarios.