| dc.description.abstract | Background: There is an increasing focus on the need to work intersectoral with public health
in municipalities, which imply that the employees in all sectors should work with public
health. However, there are currently no published questionnaires that can map employees’
knowledge and opinion on the municipal public health work.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a questionnaire that maps employees’
knowledge and opinion on their own public healthwork and public health work within and
across sectors in the municipality.
Material and Method: This study is based on qualitative methods with semi-structured and
cognitive interviews. The main data was collected through six qualitative individual
interviews of employees from different sectors in four different municipalities. First they were
interviewed about how they understood and worked with public health and what type of
questions they could be asked in a questionnaire to register such work. Based on qualitative
analysis of these interviews, information fromprofessionals, published literature, reports and
laws a draft version of a questionnaire was tested on the same participants using cognitive
interviews. The final first version was sent to the participants and the involved professionals
to evaluate the face validity.
Results: Large variances were identified in the level of knowledge among employees when it
comes to public health and public health work. This made it necessary to include information
of what public health work is in the questionnaire and technical terms had to be avoided.
Furthermore, due to different levels in knowledge, the answering categories for knowledge
questions were scaled. This also had the effect of making the participants think through the
questions. The main topics in the questionnaire were organisational issues and competency,
along with how the employees perceive public health work.
The questionnaire aims to map public health work based on employees` perceptions and not
the municipality's actual performance of this work
Conclusion: A final first version of a questionnaire that maps employees' knowledge and
opinion on the municipal public health work has been developed and is ready for further
testing. | nb_NO |
