Validation of a preparation for decision making scale.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Patient Decision Making
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Effective patient preparation is crucial for shared decision-making (SDM).
• Existing tools may not fully capture patient readiness for complex health decisions.
• The Preparation for Decision Making (PrepDM) scale was developed to address this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties of the PrepDM scale.
• To determine the reliability and validity of the PrepDM scale in assessing patient preparation for decision-making.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study involving 400 orthopaedic patients who viewed a decision aid.
• Patients completed questionnaires including demographic information, treatment intention, decisional conflict, decision aid acceptability, and the PrepDM scale.
• Psychometric evaluation included internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha), correlations with Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) subscales, and discrimination between helpful/unhelpful decision aid users.

Main Results:

• The PrepDM scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency (alpha coefficients 0.92–0.96).
• The scale showed significant correlations with DCS informed (r=-0.21) and support (r=-0.13) subscales.
• The PrepDM scale effectively discriminated between patients who found the decision aid helpful (p<0.0001) and was strongly unidimensional.

Conclusions:

• The PrepDM scale exhibits very good psychometric properties.
• The scale is a reliable and valid measure for assessing patient preparation for SDM.
• The PrepDM scale can enhance the evaluation of interventions promoting SDM in complex healthcare decisions.