JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In 2018, Nigeria implemented the world’s largest HIV survey “The Nigeria AIDS Indicator and Impact survey (NAIIS)”, with the overarching goal of obtaining more reliable metrics regarding the national scope of HIV epidemic control in Nigeria.

Objective:

To (1) describe the processes involved in the development of a new database evaluation tool (“Database Quality Assurance Score [dQAS]) (2) Assess the application of the dQAS in the evaluation and validation of the NAIIS database.

Methods:

With the assistance of expert review panelists, the dQAS tool was created using an online Delphi (e-Delphi) methodology. Thematic categories were developed to form superordinate categories that grouped themes together. Subordinate categories were then created that decomposed themes down for more specificity. A validation score was employed to assess the technical performance of the NAIIS database. This culminated in the development of the dQAS.

Results:

The finalized dQAS tool was composed of 34 items with a total score of 81.The tool has two sections; a validation item section - which contains 5 sub-sections; and a quality assessment score section, which assigns a score of “1” for “Yes” to indicate that the performance measure item was present and “0” for “No” to indicate that the measure was absent. There were also additional scaling scores ranging from “0” to a maximum of “4” depending on the measure. The NAIIS database achieved 78 out of the maximum total score of 81, yielding an overall technical performance score of 96.3%, which placed it in the highest category denoted as “Exceptional”.

Conclusions:

This study showed the feasibility of remote internet-based collaboration for the development of dQAS - a tool to assess the validity of a locally-created database infrastructure for a developing setting. Using dQAS, the NAIIS database was found to be valid, reliable and a valuable source of data for future population-based HIV-related studies.