Development and evaluation of a rehabilitation training compliance scale for patients with urinary incontinence

Urinary incontinence treatment includes conservative treatment, physical devices, medication, and surgery. Pelvic floor muscle training combined with bladder training is among the most effective, non-invasive, and economical ways to treat urinary incontinence, and compliance with training is essential in urinary incontinence treatment. Several instruments assess pelvic floor muscle training and bladder training. However, no tool has been found that assesses compliance with pelvic floor muscle training when combined with bladder training for urinary incontinence. This study aimed to develop a rehabilitation training compliance scale for patients with urinary incontinence and to evaluate its validity and reliability.

This study was performed in two tertiary hospitals in Hainan, China between December 2020 and July 2021, 123 patients were included. A literature review, group discussions, and two rounds of letter consultations were performed to acquire the item pool and finalise the 12 items for this scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach's α, split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, content validity, construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity were used to examine the items in the scale.

A 12-item scale comprising three factors accounted for 85.99% of the variance in the data. The Cronbach's α, split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, and content validity index of the scale were 0.95, 0.89, 0.86, and 0.93, respectively. Comparison with the Chen pelvic floor muscle exercise self-efficacy scale showed high calibration correlation validity (coefficient = 0.89).

The training compliance scale developed in this study is a valid and reliable measurement tool to assess pelvic floor muscle training and bladder training compliance in patients with urinary incontinence.