Measuring Patient-Reported Acceptability Outcomes via the Program Acceptability Tool for Telehealth

Area of Science:

• Clinical Psychology
• Health Services Research
• Digital Health

Background:

• Assessing treatment acceptability is crucial for understanding patient experiences in clinical trials, particularly in unique telehealth settings.
• Existing methods often rely on objective behaviors or fit-for-use measures, lacking theoretical grounding.
• Patient-reported outcomes for acceptability in mental health telehealth trials have been inconsistently applied.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce and validate the Program Acceptability Tool for Telehealth (PATT), a novel, theoretically grounded instrument.
• Capture patient-reported acceptability specifically within telehealth-based clinical trials.
• Provide a nuanced measure of patient experiences with digital health interventions.

Main Methods:

• Describe the initial development and validation of the PATT.
• Administer the PATT to 123 caregivers in an ongoing clinical trial focused on caregiver well-being.
• Evaluate psychometric properties including internal consistency and convergent validity.

Main Results:

• The 12-item PATT demonstrated robust psychometric properties, including high internal consistency (α = 0.82-0.90) and content validity.
• Convergent validity was confirmed through significant correlations between PATT scores and behavioral engagement metrics.
• The tool effectively captures patient perspectives on telehealth interventions.

Conclusions:

• The PATT is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing patient acceptability in telehealth trials.
• It offers a nuanced perspective on program, process, and impact-related experiences.
• Further validation is recommended for broader applications of the PATT in digital health research.