Validated medication adherence questionnaires and associated factors in chronic patients: Systematic review

To identify validated questionnaires to assess medication adherence, and its associated factors, in adult patients with chronic pathologies.

A systematic review of scientific publications that describe validated medication adherence questionnaires in PubMed and Scopus was carried out during May 2022. The search strategy combined the MeSH Heading "Medication adherence" with the keywords: "Questionnaire" and "Validation"; adding "Spanish" to rescue questionnaires in our language. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses or scientific articles with full text available in Spanish or English were selected; published from January 2000 to April 2022; that present the application and validation of a medication adherence questionnaire in adults with chronic pathologies; and publications of the initial validation of a questionnaire, recovered through bibliographic citations of the previously identified publications, even if they are prior to the year 2000. The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines were followed to represent the search process, inclusion and exclusion of the retrieved publications.

Ninety-seven records in PubMed and 3 adding "Spanish" were retrieved; in Scopus, 334 records were retrieved and 13 with "Spanish". One hundred-eighteen records were retrieved through bibliographic citations identification. From the analysis of the previous publications, 14 validated questionnaires were identified that assess medication adherence and are applied in English and/or Spanish in adult patients with chronic pathologies. For each questionnaire, the following characteristics were described: name, authors, year of publication, dimensions (barriers and facilitators factors), number and wording of the items, response scale, form of administration, language and pathologies of the initial validation. Of the subsequent validations, only those carried out in English and/or Spanish were presented. So far, 6 questionnaires were validated in Spanish and only for certain chronic pathologies.

14 validated questionnaires were identified, 6 of them were validated in Spanish. They are designed to evaluate medication adherence in a comprehensive manner, being useful to be applied in hospital and community pharmaceutical services. This review provides health professionals with tools to develop and validate their own questionnaire, adapting the wording to the local language and context of the health system.