Shared decision making: the reliability of the OPTION scale in Italy.
OBJECTIVE
To provide psychometric characteristics of the Italian language version of the OPTION scale and descriptive statistics on patients' involvement. The OPTION scale assesses the extent to which clinicians involve patients in therapeutic decisions. The English language version has a Cohen's kappa score for individual items ranging from 0.45 to 0.98 and an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the total score of 0.77.


METHODS
Six male GPs provided 235 audiotaped consultations with consecutive patients who had attended for a new illness episode over a 2-month period. Thirty interviews were rated by two raters to assess inter- and intra rater as well as test-retest reliability of the Italian language version of the OPTION scale. Based on the whole sample, Cronbach's alpha and an exploratory factor analysis were performed to assess internal validity and to determine factor loadings.


RESULTS
Cohen's kappa values were comprised between 0.29 and 0.73, the ICC at test and retest was 0.85 and 0.81 and Cronbach's alpha 0.82. The ratings for each OPTION item showed a skewed distribution: the majority of scores (>70%) were between 0 (behaviour absent) and 2 (minimum skill level).


CONCLUSIONS
The reliability indices were satisfactory and similar to those reported for the original OPTION.


CONCLUSIONS
OPTION can be used for both teaching purposes and research, as well as for future cross-national comparisons.
Goss
Claudia
C
Department of Medicine and Public Health, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. claudia.goss@univr.it
Fontanesi
Silvia
S
Mazzi
Maria Angela
MA
Del Piccolo
Lidia
L
Rimondini
Michela
M
Elwyn
Glyn
G
Zimmermann
Christa
C
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003142:Communication; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003657:Decision Making; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D010819:Physician's Role / Q000523:psychology; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010821:Physicians, Family / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D013637:Tape Recording; D014175:Translating; D006113:United Kingdom