Reliability and reproducibility of an Italian questionnaire on "Knowledge of high social impact Eye Diseases" (KED-IT).

Background: Health literacy plays an important role in public health. Although this has been demonstrated in the field of ophthalmology, there are very few specific instruments available to assess eye health literacy. This work aims to develop an Italian questionnaire on knowledge of eye diseases (Knowledge on Eye Disease, Italian version; KED-IT) and to evaluate its reliability and reproducibility. The KED-IT focuses on diseases with high social impact, specifically glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and keratoconus, which is the main cause of corneal transplant in Italy.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted. The KED-IT was self-administered by the study participants twice. The interval between each administration (T0 and T1) was 5 to 8 days. Reliability was assessed using the KR-20 coefficient. The test-retest Cohen's Kappa coefficient was estimated to measure the stability and reproducibility of the results obtained between T0 and T1.

Results: A total of 60 subjects participated in the study. The response rate at T1 was 92%. The KR-20 reliability coefficient of the 14-item KED-IT questionnaire was good with a value of 0.878. The Cohen's kappa value for all 14 items of the KED-IT questionnaire was  = 0.747, indicating good agreement.

Conclusions: The KED-IT is the first specific ophthalmic knowledge questionnaire validated in the Italian language and we hope that it may be a starting point for the study of eye health literacy in the Italian population.