Cross-validation of an instrument measuring students attitudes toward pharmaceutical care

The purpose-of-this study was to further validate the construct validity, r eliability, and scaling properties of a previously developed 13-item instru ment that measures pharmacy students attitudes toward pharmaceutical care, the Pharmaceutical Care Attitudes Survey (PCAS). The PCAS was-distributed t o 115 second-year professional pharmacy students at the University of Georg ia in the Disease Management I course during November 1997; Eighty-nine stu dents (77 percent) completed and returned the survey. Means and standard de viations for each of the 13-items and the three scales of the PCAS were cal culated. The distribution of item responses, item to intended scale total c orrelations, inter-scale correlations, item to competing scale correlations , item discriminant validity tests, and Cronbach's alpha were calculated. O verall, students have positive attitudes toward pharmaceutical care demonst rated-by transformed scores of 84.38, 82.02, and 72.50 for the "professiona l benefit", "professional duty", and "return on effort" scales, respectivel y (transformed scores ranged from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing more positive attitudes toward pharmaceutical care). The reliability :estim ates (Cronbach's alphas) of the three scales of the PCAS range from 0.69 to 0.93 and ail item to scale correlations are greater than 0.40. Results of this investigation provide additional evidence that-the PCAS is a reliable instrument and suggests that the PCAS is a valid instrument with three sepa rate constructs.