Sociocognitive determinants of self-reported compliance with standard precautions: Development and preliminary testing of a questionnaire with French health care workers

• To our knowledge, this is the first work using a sociocognitive theory to assess determinants of health care workers' self-reported compliance to standard precautions.
• The sociocognitive determinants are based on the theory of planned behavior.
• A preliminary questionnaire was validated with good psychometric properties.
• The questionnaire can be used to adapt infection prevention strategies to medical and nursing staff.

BackgroundInconsistent compliance of health care workers with standard precautions has already been documented. The objective of this study was to develop a questionnaire to investigate the sociocognitive determinants of compliance with standard precautions based on the theory of planned behavior.MethodsTo construct the Standard Precautions Questionnaire (SPQ), items were selected using a systematic review of literature and semistructured interviews with 54 health care workers. Thirty-five items were selected for a draft questionnaire. These questionnaires were sent to 649 health care workers in 3 medical specialties (pediatrics, geriatrics, and intensive care) in a French University hospital. A total of 331 valid questionnaires were analyzed.ResultsFactor analysis yielded a final 7-factor solution with an explained variance of 66.51%, with 24 items. The 7 dimensions were the following: attitude toward standard precautions, social influence facilitating organization, exemplary behavior of colleagues, organizational constraints, individual constraints, and intention to perform standard precautions. Some differences were observed between medical specialties on attitude toward standard precautions, social influence, and individual constraints.ConclusionThe SPQ met the conditions of reliability and validity in accordance with psychometric demands and could be used to evaluate attitudes and intention to perform standard precautions among medical and nursing staff.