This paper aims to analyze the content validity of self-assessment tools that make up the Evaluation for Quality Improvement (EQI) of the Family Health Strategy (FHS). It is a retrospective ecological study on secondary data available from 46 out 64 municipalities participating in the EQI program until December 2007 in Espírito Santo state, Brazil, where 241 family health teams were identified. The average percentage of "yes" responses was calculated from data provided by health teams for each quality standard component of the EQI. There was a non-linearity between the implementation complexity of work processes suggested by the EQI from the list of quality standards on each quality level and self-assessment of the health teams of municipalities surveyed. The non-linear relation between the quality levels of EQI and complexity of implementation of work processes recommended by the standards of quality shows the need to rearrange the terms of self-assessment, establish new quality standards and to find a more consistent correlation between the difficulty of implementation of work processes in FHP and quality levels.
primary health care; family health; quality of health care; Evaluation for Quality Improvement of the Family Health Strategy
