Background: In order to evaluate the patients’ medication compliance various measures have been performed.
Aim: The aim of the current study is the assessment of the psychometric properties (reliability and convergent validity) of the Self Efficacy for Appropriate Medication Scale (SEAMS)in a group of Greek chronic disease patients.
Method: Thirty-six patients participated voluntarily in the pilot study. Based on the data which have been collected at initial assessment, item analysis of SEAMS was conducted. In order to test the psychometric properties of the specific instrument, we used the following tests: repeatability, internal consistency, convergent validity and test-retest reliability.
Results: Item analysis confirmed that all items of the questionnaire indicated satisfactory variability. SEAMS internal consistency was very good presenting a value of Cronbach’s a at 0.880. Spearman’s r and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) revealed strong correlations between initial assessment and re-assessment. SEAMS convergent validity analysis indicated that the items were also related to the same construct.
Conclusion: The findings of this study show that the Greek version of SEAMS provided excellent reliability and validity supporting that it can be used within chronic disease populations and in the context of national medication compliance measurement. These findings are confirmed by other relevant studies.
Keywords : SEAMS; chronic disease patients; medication compliance; psychometric properties; internal consistency; convergent validity