RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Reliability and Test-Retest Stability of the Treatment Perception Questionnaire (TPQ) in the Oncology Field: A Pilot Study
Federica Sancassiani1, *, Sara Gambino1, Jutta Lindert2, Lapo Sali3, Irene Pinna1, Giulia Origa1, Giulia Cossu1, Mario Scartozzi1, Antonio Preti4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2021Volume: 17
Issue: Suppl-1, M10
First Page: 324
Last Page: 330
Publisher ID: CPEMH-17-324
DOI: 10.2174/1745017902117010324
Article History:
Received Date: 18/12/2020Revision Received Date: 08/7/2021
Acceptance Date: 09/7/2021
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2021
Collection year: 2021
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Patients' satisfaction is an indicator of technical, instrumental, environmental, and interpersonal aspects of care. It shows how much the health service “as a whole organization” meets the patients’ psychosocial expectations and if the health professionals combine their technical competence with relational skills. The Treatment Perception Questionnaire (TPQ) is a brief instrument developed in the United Kingdom for research with substance abuse disorder populations. The present study aimed at evaluating the reliability and test-retest stability of the TPQ Italian translation in a sample of patients with solid and blood cancers.
Methods:
The TPQ was administered to 263 people with solid and blood cancers. Test-retest reliability was evaluated in a subgroup of 116 participants who completed the TPQ again after 3 months.
Results:
The reliability of TPQ was good. Cronbach’s alpha: 0.83 (95%CI: 0.79-0.86), 0.66 (0.59-0.72), 0.71 (0.65-0.769), respectively, in the total test, and in subscales on “staff perception”, and “program perception”. Test-retest reliability was 0.82 (0.77-0.87). The mean difference between the first and the second assessment was 1.0 (SD = 7.1; 95% CI -0.35 to 2.33). By plotting the differences and the means of the two assessments, 5/116 cases (4.3%) were outside the upper and lower limits of agreement.
Conclusions:
This study points out good reliability and test-retest stability of the TPQ in the oncology field. The TPQ can be used to assess variation over time about satisfaction with care in patients with oncological diseases, favoring the identification of unmet patients’ needs about the quality of the service.