[Rehabilitation-related expectations and motivations in patients with nonspecific backache. The development of a standardized questionnaire]

The success of rehabilitation programmes is assumed to be influenced by patients' expectations and motivations toward these regimens. Yet only few standardized measurement instruments of these patient attributes are available. This paper is concerned with the development of a standardized questionnaire measuring patients' expectations and motivations with respect to rehabilitation programmes. Basically derived from focus group discussions with chronically ill, we defined and operationalized four dimensions of expectations toward rehabilitation programmes. In applying the questionnaire it could be shown that the instrument is easy to use, shows acceptable psychometric properties and is correlated with relevant patient characteristics.