Validation of questionnaires and rating scales used in medicine: Protocol for a systematic review of burnout self-reported measures

BackgroundIn the era of evidence-based medicine, decision-making about treatment of individual patients involves conscious, specific, and reasonable use of modern, best evidences. Diagnostic tests are usually obeying to the well-established quality standards of reproducibility and validity. Conversely, it could be tedious to assess the validation studies of tests used for diagnosis of mental and behavioral disorders. This work aims at establishing a methodological reference framework for the validation process of diagnostic tools for mental disorders. We implemented this framework as part of the protocol for the systematic review of burnout self-reported measures. The objectives of this systematic review are (a) to assess the validation processes used in each of the selected burnout measures, and (b) to grade the evidence of the validity and psychometric quality of each burnout measure. The optimum goal is to select the most valid measure(s) for use in medical practice and epidemiological research. MethodsThe review will consist in systematic searches in MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and EMBASE databases. Two independent authors will screen the references in two phases. The first phase will be the title and abstract screening, and the second phase the full-text reading. There will be 4 inclusion criteria for the studies. Studies will have to (a) address the psychometric properties of at least one of the eight validated burnout measures (b) in their original language (c) with sample(s) of working adults (18 to 65 years old) (d) greater than 100. We will assess the risk of bias of each study using the Consensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments checklist. The outcomes of interest will be the face validity, response validity, internal structure validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and alternate form reliability, enabling assessing the psychometric properties used to validate the eight concerned burnout measures. We will examine the outcomes using the reference framework for validating measures of mental disorders. Results will be synthetized descriptively and, if there is enough homogenous data, using a meta-analysis. Ethics and disseminationWe will publish this review in a peer-reviewed journal. A report will be prepared for the health practitioners and scientists and disseminated through the Network on the Coordination and Harmonization of European Occupational Cohorts (https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA16216, http://omeganetcohorts.eu/) and the Network of scientists from Swiss universities working in different areas of stress (https://www.stressnetwork.ch/). PROSPERO registration numberCRD42019124621