Validation of Persian Version of Suhanen et al.'s Individualized Care Scale

Individualized care is a concept that describes personal characteristics of patients in clinical conditions, their personal life situation, and their preferences in order to promote participation in decision-making. The purpose of this study was to validate the Persian version of the Suhanen et al.'s (2005) individualized care scale.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019. Initially, the individualized care scale of Suhanen et al (2005) was translated in forward-backward way with 19 items and on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = completely disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = no opinion, 4 = agree, 5 = completely agree). Content and face validity were then assessed using the opinions of 10 health management professionals (majors of health care management, health policy and health economics) Internal reliability of the questionnaire was assessed using the opinions of 20 patients admitted to gynecology, internal medicine and surgery wards of Yazd 3 teaching hospitals, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.93) was calculated using SPSS 20 software.

The results of content validity calculation showed that all items of the current questionnaire had acceptable Content Validity Ratio, and the Content Validity Index was 0.73 for this questionnaire. Face validity analysis also demonstrated that all experts approved the questionnaire items. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaire was 0.93, and for "clinical status", "personal life situation" and "decision-making control over care," was 0.90, 0.87 and 0.90 respectively; the values were acceptable, and the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed; none of the items were removed.

The questionnaire can be used as a credible and valuable tool for assessing individualized patient care.