Is E-Version Transition of the Medication Adherence Scale Feasible for CKD Management? A Pilot Study

Background To transfer a paper-version Chinese and Western medication adherence scale for CKD into an electronic scale, and evaluate its validity, internal consistency and clinical implementation, and assess whether the transition is feasible in clinic. Methods We built an e-version Chinese and Western medication adherence scale based on the Wen-JuanXing platform. CKD subjects’ responses were applied to test the scale’s validity and internal consistency. We retested some of the participants two weeks later randomly. We also tested the clinical application. Results Of the 434 recruited patients, 228 responded. In exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy = 0.8 and Bartlett’s approx. Chi-Square = 1340.0 (df = 105, p < 0.001). We extracted four common factors which could explain 61.47% of the variance. However, Item 15 “Have you changed a traditional Chinese medicine prescription yourself within the past month?” had factor loading = 0.3 and measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) = 0.5, meaning we could not enter it into the factor analysis. The internal consistency reliability for medication adherence was 0.9, with a Guttman split-half coefficient = 0.5 and a Spearman–Brown coefficient = 0.6. Cronbach’s α was 0.9, 0.4 and 0.5 for the knowledge, belief and behavior domains, respectively. The correlation coefficient r of the test–retest reliability was −0.8 and was −0.8, 0.4, −0.3 in the knowledge, belief and behavior domains, respectively. Patients with comorbidities were more likely to respond. We detected no other significant differences in the clinical profiles between respondents and non-respondents. Conclusion The e-version Chinese and Western medication adherence scales have undesirable construct validity and internal consistency. Thus, caution is needed in transitioning the paper-version scale into an e-version.