Questionnaire design

This questionnaire was based on WHO recommendations for TB KAP surveys with a slight modification (15), which involved removing detailed questions regarding HIV/AIDS since it is not prevalent in Jordan. The first page of the questionnaire included an informed consent form, as well as a description of the contents of the questionnaire, what it aims to study, and the confidentiality of the data. It was written in both Arabic and English. To assess the accuracy of the questionnaire, an internal pre-validation procedure was carried out at all 6 Jordanian universities involving 38 students and was re-evaluated with input from experts in the field.

The questionnaire consisted of 35 multiple-choice questions that covered four main themes: (1) Demographics and general information about the participant (sex, age, field of study, academic year, smoking, Nationality, and residence), (2) Knowledge of TB symptoms, transmission routes, at-risk groups, and treatment. (3) TB attitudes, practices, and care-seeking behavior, (4) TB awareness and sources of information.

Questions were scored as follows: for questions with a single correct answer, correct and incorrect answers were scored as 5 and 0, respectively. While for questions with multiple correct answers, correct and incorrect answers were scored as 1 and 0, respectively. This scoring system was done to equalize the weight given for each knowledge question, whether it had one, or more than one correct answer. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was measured using Cronbach's alpha. The questionnaire can be found in the Supplementary material.