Psychometrics of a Persian patient-centered care scale for chronic diseases

With the global prevalence of chronic diseases increasing, healthcare systems designed primarily for acute conditions face challenges. It is indicated that patient-centered care can effectively manage chronic diseases, potentially improving health outcomes. The authors aimed to develop, assess, and validate a scale to measure patient-centered care in chronic disease services within hospitals.

This study was cross-sectional in nature, carried out in 2023 within a sample of hospitals in Shiraz, a city in the southwestern region of Iran. To ensure the questionnaire's validity and reliability, the authors utilized a variety of methods, including face, content, and construct validity, as well as a reliability assessment. The construct validity and questionnaire reliability were confirmed using exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha. An exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha were utilized to conduct the psychometrics.

The item construction stage resulted in an initial questionnaire comprising a total of 70 individual items. Following the completion of the face and content validity assessment, seven items were removed due to not meeting the required validity criteria. The remaining questionnaire items had an average impact score of 3.25. Additionally, the content validity ratio (CVR) was 0.51, and the content validity index (CVI) was 0.96. The exploratory factor analysis yielded 12 constructs, which accounted for 63.873% of the variance, with an average factor loading value of 0.646. The final questionnaire comprised 57 items with a 6-point Likert scale. The reliability assessment revealed that the questionnaire had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.938 and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.936 in total.

This study developed a robust measure for evaluating patient-centered care in inpatient services for chronic diseases. The findings can inform future research and policy development. Future researchers conducting analogous studies utilizing comparable methodologies in various regions of Iran have the potential to elevate the precision and comprehensiveness of the implications derived for the beneficiaries.