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Documenting attitude changes towards homeless people: comparing two standardised surveys
David Buchanan1, Louis Rohr, Lisa Stevak
1John Stroger Hospital of Cook County, and Department of Medicine, Rush University, Chicago, Illinois, USA. David_Buchanan@rush.edu
The Attitudes Toward Homelessness Inventory (ATHI) is superior to the Attitudes Towards the Homeless Questionnaire (ATHQ) for measuring changes in medical residents' attitudes towards homeless patients after an educational intervention.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Social Determinants of Health
- Attitudinal Measurement
Background:
- Educational curricula aim to reduce stigmatizing attitudes towards homeless patients.
- The Attitudes Toward Homelessness Inventory (ATHI) and Attitudes Towards the Homeless Questionnaire (ATHQ) assess these attitudes.
- The comparative effectiveness of ATHI and ATHQ in documenting attitude changes in physicians-in-training is unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the responsiveness of the ATHI and ATHQ in measuring attitude changes among internal medicine residents after a homeless medicine curriculum.
Main Methods:
- Internal medicine residents (n=25) completed both ATHI and ATHQ before and after a 2-week homeless medicine rotation.
- Data were collected confidentially from seven cohorts at an urban public hospital.
Main Results:
- Both ATHI (P < 0.001) and ATHQ (P = 0.050) detected attitude changes.
- The ATHI demonstrated a 4.1-fold greater per-item change compared to the ATHQ (P = 0.001).
- Residents improved on 50% of ATHI items versus 12.5% of ATHQ items.
Conclusions:
- Both instruments showed attitude improvement post-curriculum.
- The ATHI proved significantly more responsive in detecting these changes.
- The ATHI is recommended as a superior tool for evaluating educational interventions on attitudes towards homeless patients.
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