Development and validation of an assessment instrument for teaching evidence-based practice to students in allied health care: the Dutch Modified Fresno

To enable students to become competent evidence-based working professionals, teaching evidence-based practice (EBP) to students in allied health care has to be effective. Measuring effectiveness of EBP curricula, however, appears to be difficult due to the lack of valid instruments for this target population. The effort needed to develop and validate a new instrument is easily underestimated. This article details this process applied to an existing EBP measurement tool. This study focuses on the development and validation of an instrument measuring the effectiveness of teaching EBP to Dutch students in allied health care. The instrument was developed from a translated Fresno Test, using a Delphi panel where face validity was assessed. To determine reliability and construct validity, we used a cross-sectional design with four groups of students (n = 169 total) with different levels of education in EBP. Cronbach's alpha was 0.832, and inter-rater reliability ICC was 0.985 (95% CI 0.976-0.991). The content validity index was 0.92. Mean scores of all four groups were statistically different from each other on a p <0.05 level. Responsiveness was 3.2 for more extreme groups and 0.9 for more similar groups. The Dutch Modified Fresno is a reliable and valid instrument to measure effects of teaching EBP in the domains knowledge and skills in the aforementioned population. The instrument is able to detect minimal important changes over time