Appraisal of values in the choice of treatment

The Gortner Values in the Choice of Treatment Inventory is a set of declarative statements to which respondents can indicate agreement or disagreement in a Likert-type format. The statements are based on the moral principles of Autonomy, Beneficence/Nonmaleficence, and Justice as conceptualized by Beauchamp and Childress (1979). The first trial was reported for 15 families in 1980. The second trial was part of a larger study in June 1981 to April 1982 of 100 families, of whom 70 had a member undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery, and 30 had a member under medical treatment for coronary artery disease. Spearman rank order correlations were used to evaluate responses within families and between groups at Time 1 and Time 2. Surgical family correlations for Autonomy were weak, but were moderately strong for Beneficence/Nonmaleficence. A highly significant main-effect finding, using repeated measures ANOVA, was that all patients and spouses showed mean Autonomy scores that were significantly higher than those for Beneficence/Nonmaleficence and Justice. Principal components factor analysis followed by varimax rotation supported two of the three hypothesized constructs. Surgical families emerged as the key reference group for further analysis.