The Primary Care Assessment Survey: tests of data quality and measurement performance
Authors
Safran, Dana GelbKosinski, Mark
Tarlov, Alvin R.
Rogers, William H.
Taira, Deborah A.
Lieberman, Naomi
Ware, John E. Jr.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
1998-05-22Keywords
AdultHealth Care Surveys
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Humans
Massachusetts
Outcome Assessment (Health Care)
Population Surveillance
Primary Health Care
*Questionnaires
Reproducibility of Results
Research Design
Biostatistics
Epidemiology
Health Services Research
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
OBJECTIVES: The authors examine the data quality and measurement performance of the Primary Care Assessment Survey (PCAS), a patient-completed questionnaire that operationalizes formal definitions of primary care, including the definition recently proposed by the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Primary Care. METHODS: The PCAS measures seven domains of care through 11 summary scales: accessibility (organizational, financial), continuity (longitudinal, visit-based), comprehensiveness (contextual knowledge of patient, preventive counseling), integration, clinical interaction (clinician-patient communication, thoroughness of physical examinations), interpersonal treatment, and trust. Data from a study of Massachusetts state employees (n = 6094) were used to evaluate key measurement properties of the 11 PCAS scales. Analyses were performed on the combined population and for each of the 16 subgroups defined according to sociodemographic and health characteristics. RESULTS: The 11 PCAS scales demonstrated consistently strong measurement characteristics across all subgroups of this adult population. Tests of scaling assumptions for summated rating scales were well satisfied by all Likert-scaled measures. Assessment of data completeness, scale score dispersion characteristics, and inter-scale correlations provide strong evidence for the soundness of all scales, and for the value of separately measuring and interpreting these concepts. CONCLUSIONS: With public and private sector policies increasingly emphasizing the importance of primary care, the need for tools to evaluate and improve primary care performance is clear. The PCAS has excellent measurement properties, and performs consistently well across varied segments of the adult population. Widespread application of an assessment methodology, such as the PCAS, will afford an empiric basis through which to measure, monitor, and continuously improve primary care.Source
Med Care. 1998 May;36(5):728-39. Link to article on publisher's sitePermanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/47416PubMed ID
9596063Related Resources
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