A validity study of a questionnaire about the perception of conscience among care professionals in primary health care in Lithuania

Abstract: Health care professionals often are in ethically difficult situations. They experience distress when they either face a situation with contradictory demands or are hindered to take actions they experience as ethically demanded. Health care professionals who have high moral sensitivity will experience ethical demands that may give them bad conscience, when they do not act in accordance with these demands. How they react on bad conscience is connected to their perception of the origin and significance of conscience. The thesis is designed as a two-part study. Overall aim for the thesis was to describe the essence of the concept of conscience reflected by the care professionals in primary health care. Study part 1 was performed as a literature analysis based on nine articles from1992-2004, of the databases of CHINAL, PubMed and ELIN, with the purpose to review and summarize past research about the conscience of care professionals. The aim of study part 2 was to examine the validity of the questionnaire of ‘Conscience’ among care providers in primary health care. Two interpreters translated the questionnaire, which was originally in English, into Lithuanian. In order to test language validity, another 2 interpreters translated the Lithuanian version back into English. Face validity and content validity aspects have been used to test the validity of questionnaire ‘Conscience’ Lithuanian version. This validation process has been carried out to judge if the items are relevant and furthermore clear, understandable and relevant for care professionals. The pilot study has been performed with the revised and final version of the questionnaire. 40 health care professionals from primary health care center participated in pilot study. The data has been analyzed by factor analysis. Sixteen items were retained in the factor analysis, and they loaded in six factors. Through the factors were extracted the factors with the labels ‘Individual conscience’, ‘Inner voice (God)’, ‘Silent conscience’, ‘Interpretation of conscience’, ‘Listening the conscience’ and, ‘Conscience and human development’.