Survey development, validation, and reliability
The survey was developed after reviewing validated surveys in literature (1, 15, 21, 22, 26) and was designed using the general principles of good survey design (27). Several sources were used to generate a pool of questions considered to be relevant to the study objectives (1, 13, 26, 28). The online survey was created using the technology of Google Forms provided by Google ™ and was constructed in English, but it was delivered to participants in Arabic, the formal language in Jordan. The survey contained multiple-choice questions and could be completed within 15 minutes.
To ensure face validity, the first draft of the survey was evaluated by twelve independent academics who have previous experience in food/beverage/herb-drug interactions and a statistician. The provided comments and feedback were considered and incorporated where appropriate to develop the final version of the survey. The survey was then translated from English into Arabic and back by two senior academic staff members who are fluent in both languages. The questions were free from medical jargon or difficult terminology and popular trade names were mentioned to help participants recognize the drugs of interest. Finally, the survey was piloted on a sample of 25 academics and 25 non-academic people to enhance clarity, readability, understandability, and confirm its applicability to the Jordanian population. Internal consistency reliability was tested by the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.
The final version of the survey contained four parts with the first part (Part A) comprised of nine questions about sociodemographic information; the second part (Part B) consisted of six questions about the perception of the community toward food/beverage/herb-drug interactions; the third part (Part C) consisted of five questions, was designed to assess the attitude and practice of community toward the food/beverage/herb-drug interactions; the fourth part (Part D) included five questions to evaluate the knowledge about common food/beverage/herb-drug interactions. The last part was used to calculate the knowledge score (out of 5), depending on the participants’ correct answers.