Development and reliability of a quantitative personal hygiene assessment tool

Personal hygiene practices, including facewashing and handwashing, reduce transmission of pathogens, but are difficult to measure. Using color theory principles, we developed and tested a novel metric that generates quantitative measures of facial and hand cleanliness, proxy indicators of personal h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of hygiene and environmental health 2020-06, Vol.227, p.113521-113521, Article 113521
Main Authors: Delea, Maryann G., Snyder, Jedidiah S., Woreta, Mulat, Zewudie, Kassahun, Solomon, Anthony W., Freeman, Matthew C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Behavioral outcomes
Child
Child, Preschool
Cross-Sectional Studies
Face
Female
Hand
Health Behavior
Health Education
Humans
Hygiene
Male
Observer Variation
Personal hygiene
Reproducibility of Results
Single-Blind Method
WASH
Water, sanitation, and hygiene
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Summary:Personal hygiene practices, including facewashing and handwashing, reduce transmission of pathogens, but are difficult to measure. Using color theory principles, we developed and tested a novel metric that generates quantitative measures of facial and hand cleanliness, proxy indicators of personal hygiene practices. In this cross-sectional study, conventional qualitative cleanliness metrics (e.g., presence or absence of nasal and ocular discharge, dirt under nails or on finger pads and palms) were also recorded. We generated Gwet's agreement coefficients to determine the inter-rater reliability of novel and conventional metrics between various rating groups, where appropriate, including two non-blinded raters, non-blinded vs. blinded raters, three blinded raters, and blinded vs. computer raters. Inter-rater reliability of the novel metric was high across all rating groups, ranging from 0.98 (95% CI: 0.97, 0.99) to 0.90 (95% CI: 0.90, 0.91) for facial cleanliness, and 0.97 (95% CI: 0.96, 0.98) to 0.92 (95% CI: 0.91, 0.93) for hand cleanliness. Our novel metric generates more nuanced data than conventional qualitative metrics, and allows for quantifiable assessments of facial and hand cleanliness.
ISSN:1438-4639
1618-131X
DOI:10.1016/j.ijheh.2020.113521