Psychometric Properties of Persian Version of "Patient Willingness to Ask Safety Questions Survey" in Iranian Hospitals

Patient safety is one of the key elements of health care organization in improving the quality of care. Involving patients in improving patient safety is the recent World Health Organization’ approach. Patient participation can reduce medical errors and increase patient safety. There is not any valid and reliable Persian questionnaire to assess patient participation in safe car. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the questionnaire: "Patient Willingness to Ask Safety Questions Survey (PWASQS)".

In this study, 30 patients participated. The PWASQS’ questionnaire consisted of nine dimensions and 41 questions that were scored on a five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire questions indicated the patients' willingness to ask any questions related to their safety from the physicians and the nurses. Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and Content Validity Index (CVI) were used to evaluate the content validity and its internal reliability was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

In the present study, the total CVR of the questionnaire was 0.89, which varied from 0.79 to 0.95 for different dimensions, and the CVI was 0.94 for different dimensions ranged from 0.89 to 1. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the whole questionnaire was 0.7 9which for each of the dimensions ranged from 0.7 to 0.96, indicating appropriate reliability of the questions.

The results of this study showed that the translated version of the PWASQS questionnaire has a relatively acceptable reliability and validity can be used to measure patients' willingness to improve patient safety.