Expert Discussion

The entire item pool was then reviewed and discussed by a panel of experts from our and other known working groups, with knowledge in developing questionnaires as well as in the field of stigma. The experts were asked to rate all items according to the extent to which they seemed to be an appropriate measure of the intended construct. They were also asked to provide open-ended feedback. Items agreed upon by at least two of the three experts were retained or reworded according to their comments. This ensured that only items that were understandable and meaningful in terms of both content and language were used. Through this process, the item pool was reduced to 96 items since the expert panel revealed problems like overly complex wording, repetition, or other violations of “best-practices” regarding item structure (48).