Objective To evaluate the reliability and validity of a national questionnaire on the intelligent maturity of infectious disease surveillance and early warning.

Methods A questionnaire was developed based on the intelligent maturity index system for infectious disease surveillance and early warning. Expert consultation was used to assess the content, items, and content validity of the questionnaire. A random sampling method was taken to select 700 county (district) CDCs in the Chinese mainland for a one-month questionnaire survey in mid-October 2023. Item analysis was performed with the critical ratio method. Reliability was evaluated using Cronbach′s α coefficient and Spearman-Brown coefficient. Validity was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and content validity index.

Results In the item analysis, six items did not meet the standard: IT infrastructure construction, coverage of security measures such as cloud desktop and cloud terminal, adoption of national information standards for the informatization construction of infectious disease surveillance and early warning, ability to call national application programming interfaces (APIs) and use software development kits (SDKs) to achieve application integration, missed reporting rate of infectious diseases, and proportion of confirmed cases in the syndromic surveillance of infectious diseases. After comprehensive consideration, these items were retained. The reliability analysis showed that the total Cronbach′s α coefficient was 0.872. The Cronbach′s α coefficients for the three dimensions were 0.755 for intelligent strategy and foundation, 0.857 for intelligent business process and management, and 0.607 for intelligent effectiveness. The Spearman-Brown coefficient was 0.756. The validity analysis showed that the overall content validity index of the questionnaire was 0.985, and the content validity index of each item ranged from 0.820 to 1.000. The structural equation model constructed by confirmatory factor analysis fitted well after modification.

Conclusion The national questionnaire on the intelligent maturity of infectious disease surveillance and early warning has good reliability and validity, and is suitable for evaluating the intelligent maturity of infectious disease surveillance and early warning on integrated regional platforms across provinces nationwide.