Development and validation of a Medication Adherence Universal Questionnaire: the MAUQ

Different questionnaires assess self-reported medication adherence and others quantify aspects of patients attitudes towards medication, but not together in a single instrument. Gathering these two aspects in a single instrument could reduce patients survey burden.

The aim of this study was to develop the Medication Adherence Universal Questionnaire (MAUQ) using the Maastricht Utrecht Adherence in Hypertension short version (MUAH-16) factorial structure as the hypothesized model.

A multistep process started with the modification of the MUAH-16 to obtain the MAUQ. Patients using at least one antihypertensive medicine were recruited. The two questionnaires, the MUAH-16 and MAUQ, were applied. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using the initial MUAH-16 s-order 4-factor model. An additional bifactor model with four uncorrelated factors and an overall score was tested. The comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) with confidence intervals (CIs), and standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) were used to assess both models.

A sample of 300 hypertensive patients completed the instruments. The CFA with the second-order 4-factor solution resulted in similar results for the MUAH-16 and MAUQ: CFIs of 0.934 and 0.930, RMSEAs of 0.043 [CI 0.030-0.056] and 0.045 [CI 0.031-0.057] and SRMRs of 0.060 and 0.061, respectively. The CFA with the bifactor model showed slightly better results for both the MUAH-16 and MAUQ: CFIs of 0.974 and 0.976, RMSEAs of 0.030 [CI 0.005-0.046] and 0.028 [CI 0.001-0.044], and SRMRs of 0.043 and 0.044, respectively.

CFA demonstrated that the MAUQ presented a better fit to both models than the MUAH-16, obtaining a robust universal free instrument to assess medicine-taking behaviour and four medicine beliefs components.