Development and Validation of the Biobanking Attitudes and Knowledge Survey (BANKS)

Abstract

Background No validated multi-scale instruments exist that measure community members’ views on biobanking and biospecimen donation. This study describes the development and psychometric properties of the English-language BANKS (Biobanking Attitudes aNd Knowledge Survey). Methods The BANKS was created by item generation through review of scientific literature, focus groups with community members, and input from a community advisory board. Items were refined through cognitive interviews. Content validity was assessed through an expert panel review. Psychometric properties of the BANKS were assessed in a sample of 85 community members. Results The final BANKS includes 3 scales: Attitudes, Knowledge, and Self-Efficacy; as well as 3 single items, which evaluated receptivity and intention to donate a biospecimen for research. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for two scales that use Likert response format indicated high internal consistency (Attitudes: α=.88; Self-Efficacy: α=.95). Content validity indices were moderate, ranging from 0.69 to 0.89. Intention to donate blood and intention to donate urine were positively correlated with attitudes, knowledge, self-efficacy, and receptivity to learning more about biobanking (p's range from .029 to <.001). Conclusions The final BANKS shows evidence of satisfactory reliability and validity, is easy to administer, and is a promising tool to inform biospecimen research. Additional studies should be conducted with larger samples considering biospecimen donation to further assess the instrument's reliability and validity. Impact A valid and reliable instrument measuring community members’ views about biobanking may help researchers evaluate relevant communication interventions to enhance understanding, intention, and actual biospecimen donation. A Spanish-language BANKS is under development.

Development and validation of the biobanking attitudes and knowledge survey-Spanish (BANKS-SP)

“…Analyses of pilot data indicated the final 12 item BANKS-SP-Attitudes and BANKS-SP-Self-efficacy scales demonstrated evidence of construct validity. While the level of difficulty of individual BANKS-SP-Knowledge items, and the mean number of BANKS-SP-Knowledge items answered correctly were both similar to the English language BANKS (Wells et al 2014), the summed BANKS-SP-Knowledge scale was not statistically significantly associated with intention to donate a biospecimen, attitudes towards biospecimen donation and biobanking, or biobanking self-efficacy. The sample size of 85 participants in the pilot test was selected to detect correlations with a medium effect size.…”

“…Together, this collaboration addresses critical cancer access, prevention, and control issues that impact medically underserved, low-literacy, and low-income populations. A Biobanking Community Advisory Board (B-CAB) provided guidance on the development and refinement of items for both the BANKS and the BANKS-SP (Wells et al 2014). Members of the B-CAB were ethnically and linguistically diverse.…”

“…Content validity indices were moderate, ranging from 0.69 to 0.89. The BANKS measures also demonstrated construct validity as intention to donate blood and intention to donate urine were significantly positively correlated with attitudes, knowledge, self-efficacy, and receptivity to learning more about biobanking (Wells et al 2014).…”

“…Similar to the development of the BANKS (Wells et al 2014), the development of the BANKS-SP also used an iterative and community-engaged process including a review of existing related measures and a review of focus group data conducted with English and Spanish-speaking participants (Luque et al 2012). Translation of the BANKS from English to Spanish was conducted based on the Brislin Model of Translation (Brislin 1970;Jones et al 2001).…”

“…To address this gap, the Biobanking Attitudes and Knowledge Survey (BANKS) (Wells et al 2014) was developed in English based on the knowledgeattitudes-behavior (KAB) approach (Schrader and Lawless 2004). The BANKS development used an iterative and community-engaged process including a review of existing related measures; a review of focus group data conducted with English and Spanish-speaking participants (Luque et al 2012) and the development and revision of an item pool using cognitive interviews, content validity assessment by an expert panel, and pilot testing (Wells et al 2014). The final version of the BANKS includes three multiple-item scales measuring knowledge (n = 16 items), attitudes (n = 14 items), and selfefficacy (n = 12 items), as well as three single items measuring intention to donate a biospecimen for research and receptivity to learning more about biospecimen research.…”