Background: The ability to acquire the best evidence efficiently is important for busy healthcare professionals who have to make decisions within a limited time. However, the current available assessment tools in evidence-based medicine (EBM), e.g. Berlin questionnaire and Fresno test, were not designed for assessing evidence-searching capability.

Objectives: To develop and validate a scale for measuring evidence-searching skills.

Methods: We use 2-round modified Delphi technique and organised a workforce of 7 experts who provided comments on a draft 33-item scale and rated each item on a 5-point Likert-type scale. All items rated less than 3 by any expert were removed. The items were modified or merged after authors’ discussion considering experts’ comments. When all items were rated >= 3 by all experts with an interquartile range (IQR) of