Revisiting the internal consistency and factorial validity of the 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale

To assess the internal consistency and factorial validity of the adapted French 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale in assessing adherence to noninsulin antidiabetic drug treatment.

In a cross-sectional web survey of individuals with type 2 diabetes of the Canadian province of Quebec, self-reported adherence to the antidiabetes drug treatment was measured using the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8. We assessed the internal consistency of the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8 with Cronbach's alpha, and factorial validity was assessed by identifying the underlying factors using exploratory factor analyses.

A total of 901 individuals completed the survey. Cronbach's alpha was 0.60. Two factors were identified. One factor comprised five items: stopping medication when diabetes is under control, stopping when feeling worse, feeling hassled about sticking to the prescription, reasons other than forgetting and a cross-loading item (i.e. taking drugs the day before). The second factor comprised three other items that were all related to forgetfulness in addition to the cross-loading item.

Cronbach's alpha of the adapted French Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8 was below the acceptable value of 0.70. This observed low internal consistency of the scale is probably related to the causal nature of the items of the scale but not necessarily a lack of reliability. The results suggest that the adapted French Morisky Medication Adherence Scale-8 is a two-factor scale assessing intentional (first factor) and unintentional (second factor) non-adherence to the noninsulin antidiabetes drug treatment. The scale could be used to separately identify these outcomes using scores obtained on each of the sub-scales.