Developing and testing an instrument for the measurement of individual care

This paper describes a preliminary study in which an instrument was develop ed for the measurement of individual care in adult patients and in which th e reliability and validity of the instrument were evaluated. Individual car e was defined in terms of how patient individuality was taken into account and how patient participation in decision-making was facilitated. The purpo se here is to describe the process by which the individual care instrument (IC) was developed, the preliminary testing of the instrument and psychomet ric evaluation of the instrument in a sample of adult patients discharged f rom a Finnish general Hospital (n = 203). Item analyses showed an acceptabl e level of internal consistency reliability and homogeneity in each scale o f the IC, and Cronbach alpha values were high in every measurement. Explora tory factor analysis supported a three-factor solution. The psychometric ev aluations suggested that the instrument is worthy of further development.