Measuring quality of health care from the user's perspective in 41 countries: psychometric properties of WHO's questions on health systems responsiveness.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate, for different populations, psychometric properties of questions on "health systems responsiveness", a concept developed by World Health Organization (WHO) to describe non-clinical and non-financial aspects of quality of health care. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING/DATA COLLECTION: The 2000-2002 WHO Multi-Country Study comprised 70 general population surveys. Forty-one surveys were interviewer-administered, from which we extracted respondent records indicating ambulatory and inpatient health services use (excluding long-term institutions) in the previous 12 months (50,876 ambulatory and 7,964 hospital interviews).


METHODS
We evaluated feasibility, reliability, and construct validity using 33 items with polytomous response options, comparing responses from populations identified by countries, sex, age, education, health and income.


RESULTS
Average item missing rates ranged from 0 to 16%. Domain-specific alpha coefficients exceeded 0.7 in 7 (of 9) cases. Average intertemporal reliability was acceptable in 6 (of 10) sites, where Kappas ranged from 0.54 to 0.79, but low in 4 sites (K < 0.5). Kappa statistics were higher for male, educated and healthier populations than for female, less educated and less healthy populations. Factor solutions confirmed the domain structure of 7 domains (only 7 were operationalized for ambulatory settings). As in other studies, higher incomes and age was associated with more positive responsiveness reports and ratings.


CONCLUSIONS
Quality issues addressed by WHO's questions are understood and reported adequately across diverse populations. More research is needed to interpret user-assessed quality of care comparisons across population groups within and between countries.
Valentine
N B
NB
WHO, 20, Avenue Appia, CH1211, Geneva 27, Switzerland. valentinen@who.int
Bonsel
G J
GJ
Murray
C J L
CJ
D005240:Feasibility Studies; D014943:Global Health; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011594:Psychometrics; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014944:World Health Organization