Development of a new questionnaire-based paediatric eye screening tool / Nurul Farhana Abu Bakar

Offering a comprehensive paediatric eye care is a major challenge in eyecare system globally. Many children worldwide are deprived of eye health care accessibility due to issues such as cost, labour, and time factors. Therefore, it is essential to stipulate alternative screening programs for the paediatric population. The objective of this study was to develop a new questionnaire-based paediatric eye screening tool. The items in the new questionnaire were constructed based on systematic extraction from the literature review, followed by items review by the expert groups. Four explorations were conducted to formulate the development of the questionnaire to fill in missing gaps that were unavailable from the literature review including (1) a survey on parental role in paediatric preventive eyecare to support proxy-administration approach; (2) classification of items into four vision clusters to assess the comprehensiveness of the existing items in a focus group study; (3) evaluation on parental response towards openended and close-ended question to determine investigation tactic; and (4) evaluation on characteristics of pictures to assist textual ambiguity. The development stage was divided into product development and piloting of the questionnaire.