title: Development of an In-Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire for the Chinese Population.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Patients' satisfaction has been considered as a crucial measurement of health care quality. Our objective was to develop a reliable and practical questionnaire for the assessment of in-patients' satisfaction in Chinese people, and report the current situation of in-patients' satisfaction in the central south area of China through a large-scale cross-sectional study.
  
  
  METHODS
  In order to generate the questionnaire, we reviewed previous studies, interviewed related people, held discussions, refined questionnaire items after the pilot study, and finally conducted a large cross-sectional survey to test the questionnaire.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study was conducted in three A-level hospitals in the Hunan province, China.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were 6640 patients in this large-scale survey (another 695 patients in the pilot study). A factor analysis on the data from the pilot study generated four dimensions, namely, doctors' care quality, nurses' care quality, quality of the environment and facilities, and comprehensive quality. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients for each dimension were above 0.7 and the inter-subscale correlation was between 0.72 and 0.83. The overall in-patient satisfaction rate was 89.6%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The in-patient satisfaction questionnaire was proved to have optimal internal consistency, reliability, and validity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
authors.forename: Xin-Liang
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
authors.forename: Hao-Bin
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
authors.forename: Tu-Bao
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002681:China; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D057184:Practice Patterns, Nurses' / Q000941:ethics; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000941:ethics; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires