Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Jun 22, 2017; 7(2): 89-97
Published online Jun 22, 2017. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v7.i2.89
Development of an instrument to measure patients’ attitudes towards involuntary hospitalization
Adel Gabriel
Adel Gabriel, Departments of Psychiatry and Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T3E 7M8, Canada
Author contributions: Gabriel A substantially contributed to the conception and design of the study, acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data; the author drafted the article and made critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript, and approved the final version of the article to be published.
Institutional review board statement: The project was granted an approval by the Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board (CHREB), of the University of Calgary. All patients participants provided their consent to the study.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: Not applicable.
Conflict-of-interest statement: To the best of our knowledge, no conflict of interest exists.
Data sharing statement: This is an open study.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Adel Gabriel, Associate Clinical Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Suite 300, 5 Richard Way SW, Calgary, AB T3E 7M8, Canada. gabriel@ucalgary.ca
Telephone: +1-403-2919122 Fax: +1-403-2916631
Received: August 23, 2016
Peer-review started: August 24, 2016
First decision: November 11, 2016
Revised: April 4, 2017
Accepted: May 3, 2017
Article in press: May 5, 2017
Published online: June 22, 2017
Processing time: 302 Days and 21.6 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To construct and assess the psychometric properties of an instrument to measure patients’ attitudes towards involuntary hospitalization.

METHODS

This is a two phase study. In the first phase, based on comprehensive literature review, a twenty one item scale to measure patients’ attitudes to involuntary admission was constructed. Forensic and inpatient Psychiatrists, patients’ advocates and legal experts (n = 15) were invited to participate in the validation process of the written instrument, by formally rating each item of the instrument for its relevancy in measuring patients’ attitudes to involuntary admission. In the second phase of the project, the instrument was administered to a sample of eighty consecutive patients, who were admitted involuntarily to an acute psychiatric unit of a teaching hospital. All patients completed the constructed attitudes towards involuntary admission scale, and the client satisfaction questionnaire.

RESULTS

Responses from psychiatry and advocacy experts provided evidence for face and content validity for the constructed instrument. The internal consistency reliability of the instrument is 0.84 (Chronbach’ alpha), factor analysis resulted in three correlated, and theoretically meaningful factors. There was evidence for content, convergent, and concurrent validity.

CONCLUSION

A reliable twenty one item instrument scale to measure patients’ attitudes to involuntary admission was developed. The developed instrument has high reliability, there is strong evidence for validity, and it takes ten minutes to complete.

Keywords: Scales; Mmeasurements; Patients’ attitudes; Involuntary admission; Psychiatric

Core tip: Examining patients’ attitudes towards involuntary hospitalization is crucial for making clinical decisions and is required to administer quality patient care. This project involved the development and psychometrical assessment of a reliable instrument with demonstrated evidence of validity, to measure patients’ attitudes towards involuntary hospitalization. The developed instrument consists of a 21-item, 5-point Likert questionnaire. The internal consistency reliability of the instrument is 0.84 (Chronbach’ alpha), and there is an evidence for content, convergent, and concurrent validity.