title: Attitudes of GPs to the diagnosis and management of impaired glucose tolerance: the practitioners' attitudes to hyperglycaemia (PAtH) questionnaire.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop and pilot a survey instrument assessing general practitioners' (GP) attitudes to the diagnosis and management of one form of pre-diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and to assess the performance of the questionnaire.
  
  
  METHODS
  Qualitative data together with an audit were used to generate questionnaire items, which were then subjected to a process of pre-piloting and piloting to generate a finalised item list. The pilot questionnaire was sent to 222 principal GPs in three PCTs in South West England. The first fifty responders were asked to complete the questionnaire again 2 weeks later. Principal components analysis with a Varimax rotation was used to detect latent factors within the data that may help to explain the attitudes of GPs.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The response rate after one reminder was 54.1%. Four robust factors were identified which were internally consistent (range of Cronbach's alpha=0.79-0.65), homogeneous (item-total correlations=0.60-0.21), and stable (test-retest correlation=0.74-0.58) accounting for 31.1% of the variance. The predictive validity of the item list was assessed (P=0.02 for factor 1).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The PAtH questionnaire identifies four factors that help to describe GPs attitudes to the diagnosis and management of IGT.
authors.affiliation: Peninsula Medical School (Primary Care) Smeall Building, St. Luke's Campus, Exeter, Devon EX1 2LU, UK. jason@fearn-smith.freeserve.co.uk
authors.forename: J D G
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Fearn-Smith
authors.forename: P H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Harding
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Campbell
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006943:Hyperglycemia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy; D008297:Male; D008485:Medical Audit; D010865:Pilot Projects; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom