FACTORS AFFECTING A DECISION FOR HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY

OBJECTIVE To develop and test the metrologic qualities of a questionna ire for a survey on determining factors in initiating hormone replacem ent therapy (HRT), using Ajzen's planned behaviour theory. DESIGN Semi structured interviews to collect the behavioural beliefs needed to dev elop the questionnaire and the test-retest. SETTING Family medicine pr actices and the community. PARTICIPANTS In two family medicine practic es, 42 women completed semistructured interviews that yielded the beli efs needed to design the questionnaire for the core survey Thirty othe r women from the community took part in the test-retest 2 weeks later. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The internal consistency of the constructs (ten dency of answers within a group of questions) was determined using Cro nbach's alpha coefficient. Stability of the global constructs (proport ion of subjects who had an absolute difference in their scores of less than 1 between the two measurements) was determined using the adjuste d agreement coefficient (adjusted Po). RESULTS Findings for 12 of the 14 global constructs were above the acceptance threshold of 0.60. In o ne case a could not be measured because there was only one question fo r measuring it. On the test-retest, 12 of the 14 adjusted Pos had a re liability rating at or above 80%. CONCLUSION The questionnaire develop ed using Ajzen's planned behaviour theory had the requisite metrologic qualities for integration into the core survey on determining factors for initiating HRT.