Assessing the overuse of antibiotics in children with URTIs in Saudi Arabia: development of the parental perception on antibiotics scale (PAPA scale).

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic overuse is influenced by several factors that can only be measured using a valid and reliable psychosocial measurement instrument. This study aims to establish translation and early stage validation of an instrument recently developed by this research team to measure factors influencing the overuse of antibiotics in children with upper respiratory tract infections in Saudi Arabia.
METHOD: The content evaluation panel was composed of area experts approached using the Delphi Technique. Experts were provided with the questionnaires iteratively, on a three-round basis until consensus on the relevance of items was reached independently. Translation was achieved by adapting Brislin's model of translation.
RESULTS: After going through the iterative process with the experts, consensus was reached to 58 items (including demographics). Experts also pointed out some issues related to ambiguity and redundancy in some items. A final Arabic version was produced from the translation process.
CONCLUSION: This study produced preliminary validation of the developed instrument from the experts' contributions. Then, the instrument was translated from English to Arabic. The instrument will undergo further validation steps in the future, such as construct validity.