Satisfaction with family planning services. Interpersonal and organisational dimensions

In South Africa, client satisfaction with the quality of health care has received minimal attention; probably due to the lack of locally developed and tested measures. Therefore, we developed and tested a 20-item attitude scale to determine satisfaction with Family Planning (FP) services. The objectives of this study were to: ascertain reliability of the scale and confirm, through factor analysis, that satisfaction with the FP service was based on interpersonal and organisational dimensions. The sample comprised 199 black adult interviewees (158 women and 41 men), who had previously used or were currently using contraception, from an informal settlement in Gauteng, South Africa. Three items were removed from the scale due to unacceptable communality estimates. The reliability coefficient of 0.76 for the 17-item scale was satisfactory. The principal components analysis, with orthogonal and oblique rotations, extracted two factors; accounting for 51.8% of the variance. The highest loadings on Factor I involved an interpersonal dimension (friendly, encouraging, competent, informative and communicative). Factor II tended to focus on the organisational elements of the system, such as different methods, choice of methods, service availability and length of waiting time. It was concluded that this scale was a reliable, easily administered and scored measure of satisfaction, with underlying interpersonal and organisational dimensions.