Development and initial validation of a scale to measure attitudes and beliefs of pharmacists toward their work with patients.

BACKGROUND/AIM: Studies on physicians and other health care professionals indicate that attitudes towards and beliefs in their work with patients, can affect the quality of health care, and patients' behaviour and compliance, thus an instrument is needed to survey pharmacists as healthcare providers. The aim of this study was to describe the development and psychometric validation of a survey instrument to assess attitudes and beliefs of pharmacists toward their work with patients (Pharmacists' Attitudes and Beliefs Scale, PABS). The aim of this research was to determine the reliability, validity and factor structure of a newly constructed instrument - PABS.

METHODS: The statements from the cognitive, affective, and behavioral areas were identified by literature review and selected to cover the behavior of pharmacists in providing pharmaceutical care at community settings. The initial 5-point Likert type scale of 30 items was constructed and after initial validation its revised form developed. The reliability, construct validity and factor structure of the scale were established.

RESULTS: The reliability of the scale was determined by the method of internal consistency, on a convenient sample of 123 community pharmacists. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.67. Factor analysis of principal components was performed and 7 factors with latent roots greater than 1 were extracted, explaining 64.92% of total variance, a single 30.84%, 8.20%, 6.55%, 5.63%00, 5.01%, 4.68% and 4.01%. Based on the results of factor analysis in the development of the scale, some items in the scale were excluded (totally 7), so that the revised form of the PABS contained a total of 23 items.

CONCLUSION: The initial PABS scale did not meet theoretical statistical criteria for reliability (Cronbach's alpha coefficient was < 0.7), but the findings indicated its potentially acceptable construct validity. The results support its use as a research tool to assess the behavior of pharmacists in daily practice, and provide its use as an indicator of quality in delivering pharmaceutical care.