A brief overview of the development process for written, self-report, health-related surveys.

Objective and Rationale: The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive, yet brief,' flowchart type of overview of the salient literature describing the key chronological steps involved in developing 'pencil and paper,' self-report, health-related survey instruments particularly survey instruments which endeavor to measure abstract construct such as 'quality of life,' 'disability,' or 'productivity.'This overview was designed to serve as a convenient reference guide for individuals who need to understand the basics of the whole process. Because it does not describe any of the steps in detail, the flowchart will likely be most useful to individuals who have at least some prior familiarity with the concepts, procedures and analyses mentioned, yet are not fully 'expert' in this topic area. In short, this overview is not actually meant to be a 'checklist' of key steps; brief explanations are included in order to remind the - at least somewhat initiated user of the concepts mentioned, without the reader necessarily having to look them up elsewhere.Design: This is a distillation of the salient surveydevelopment literature into a procedural overview flowchart.Method: This overview was a distillation of several authoritative sources in the literature covering the key areas of questionnaire development and psychometric theory. The overview flowchart was constructed in the form of 5 chronological, developmental phases, which formed the overall framework:Part 1: Defining the Intended Purpose of the Survey InstrumentPart 2: Item GenerationPart 3: Item ReductionPart 4: Psychometric Testing and Further Item Reduction.Part 5: Final Revision of the Prototype Into a Useable Survey Instrument (Questionnaire). The flow-chart was assessed for face and content validity by 3 questionnaire-development experts.Results and Conclusion: This paper presented a fairly comprehensive, yet brief, flowchart type of overview of the salient current literature describing the key chronological steps involved in developing 'pencil and paper,' self-report, health-related survey instruments--particularly survey instruments which endeavor to measure abstract constructs such as 'quality of life,' 'disability,' or 'productivity.' It was emphasized that this overview is meant to be a convenient 'big-picture' visualization-aid, as well as a review and reference-guide for investigators who are already familiar with most of the methodological steps and concepts involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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