Development and testing of the Attitude Scale for the Dietary Therapy of Hemodialysis Patients

To develop an attitude scale regarding the dietary therapy of hemodialysis patients and to examine its reliability and validity.

An initial item pool of 37 items was extracted from a conceptual model that had been developed in the authors' previous study and the literature was reviewed. An expert panel examined the content validity. A total of 381 Japanese hemodialysis patients then were recruited. Exploratory factor analyses and a confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the construct validity and an item analysis, internal consistency coefficients, and test-retest were used to verify the reliability.

The expert panel judged the content validity index to be satisfactory. The data from the final 16 items consisted of three factors (propensity of behavior that is affected by cognition, propensity of behavior that is affected by the food culture, and negative affect that modifies the diet). Regarding the subscales, the Cronbach's coefficient alpha values were confirmed to be reliable, showing medium-to-high internal consistency. The test-retest method confirmed the stability of the scale.

With the reliability and validity confirmed, it was established that the Attitude Scale for the Dietary Therapy of Hemodialysis Patients described herein is capable of determining the attitude of hemodialysis patients towards their dietary therapy. This scale makes it possible to quantitatively evaluate hemodialysis patients' attitudes toward dietary therapy. The accuracy of the scale needs to be improved by further examining its reliability and validity.