Qualitative Methods Used to Generate Questionnaire Items: A Systematic Review

A systematic review of articles using qualitative methods to generate questionnaire items identified in MEDLINE and PsycINFO from 2000 to 2014 was carried out. Articles were analyzed for (a) year of publication and journal domain, (b) qualitative data collection methods, (c) method of data content analysis, (d) professional experts' input in item generation, and (e) debriefing of the newly developed items. In total, 371 articles were included and results showed (a) an acceleration of published articles, (b) individual interviews and focus groups were common ways of generating items and no emergent approach was identified, (c) the content analysis was usually not described (43% of articles), (d) experts were involved in eliciting concepts in less than a third of articles, (e) 61% of articles involved a step of further submission of newly developed items to the population of interest. This review showed an insufficient reporting of qualitative methods used to generate new questionnaires despite previous recommendations.