Reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the trust in physician scale in community-dwelling older adults.

BACKGROUND

Trust is at the core of the patient-physician relationship. The Trust in Physician Scale (TPS) was specifically developed to measure such interpersonal trust and has high validity and reliability. In this study, we aimed to assess the reliability and validity of the Turkish TPS (TPS-TR) among community-dwelling older adults.

METHODS

This prospective study enrolled community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years and older. The TPS-TR and other scales of generalized anxiety disorder-7 scale (GAD-7), and multidimensional trust in health care systems scale (MTHCSS) subscale-1 "trust in health care providers" were administered to all participants. We assessed the internal consistency, item-total correlations, temporal stability, factor analysis, convergent and discriminant validity of TPS-TR.

RESULTS

The study included 230 individuals. TPS-TR demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.866) and remarkable test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.903). The lowest item-to-total correlation was observed for item 5, with a value of 0.375, which was also considered acceptable (> 0.20). TPS-TR was strongly correlated with the MTHCSS subscale-1 (p < 0.001), suggesting high convergent validity, and showed no correlation with GAD-7 (p = 0.087) indicating adequate discriminative validity.

CONCLUSION

The results of our study showed that the TPS-TR has high reliability and validity in measuring the interpersonal trust of community-dwelling older adults in their physicians.

CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER

Not applicable.