Abstract
Objective.: This article describes the development, reliability, and validity of the Preventive Medicine Attitudes and Activities Questionnaire (PMAAQ). Method.: From 1995 to 2003, the PMAAQ was administered to 353 residents at six primary care residency programs in the United States. Validity was demonstrated in four ways: content validity through an expert panel, calculation of internal consistency reliabilities, demonstration of divergent validity, and external validation using a pre-existent chart review dataset. Stability measures were also calculated. Results.: High internal consistency reliabilities among the eight scales were seen (Cronbach's α = 0.74 to 0.98). Divergent validity was demonstrated by low to moderate intercorrelations among scales (r = -0.23 to 0.54). Significant correlations were seen between several PMAAQ scales and scales created from chart review data. Two-month test-retest correlations ranged from r = 0.56 to 0.87. Results suggest that clinicians' attitudes alone are not directly responsible for behaviors. Conclusion.: The PMAAQ can validly and reliably measure residents' prevention behaviors and provide insight into their preventive healthcare attitudes. This survey could be useful in targeting areas for interventions to improve delivery of clinical preventive services, as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of such interventions, or as a quality assurance tool to monitor physician prevention activities.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 86-91 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Preventive medicine |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2006 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank Anne Marie Weber-Main and Heather Haley for their critical review and editing of manuscript drafts; David McCaffery and Kim Murphy for help with data analysis; Elizabeth Greene for manuscript preparation; and the residency programs at Dartmouth, Arkansas, Texas Southwestern, and Tulane, as well as the Texas Department of Health, for sharing their survey data. This study was supported financially by a Health Resources and Services Administration Preventive Medicine Graduate Training in Family Practice Grant (D15-PE10225).
Copyright:
Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Attitude to health
- Education
- Graduate
- Medical
- Physician practice patterns
- Physicians
- Preventive health services
- Questionnaires
- Statistics