Asthma is a prevalent, costly, and potentially deadly disease. Despite advances in the pharmacological treatment of asthma, many asthma sufferers do not benefit from their medication the way they should because they fail to take it as prescribed. The noncompliance rate for asthma is about 30% to 40%. In this study, I describe the theoretical and practical rationale for, as well as the development of, a brief self-report measure (called the Multidimensional Asthma Questionnaire $\{$MAQ$\}$) for assessing medication compliance in asthma sufferers. Results of the study showed that the MAQ had adequate internal validity and a four factor structure that was designated belief, threat, use, and knowledge respectively. Although it was hypothesized that scores on the MAQ would correlate positively with an independent measure of compliance that was based on pharmacists' medication refill records, this hypothesis was not supported. Neither the MAQ, nor two other measures for assessing the attitudes and beliefs of asthma patients, had any relationship to medication compliance as estimated by pharmacists' refill records. In fact, when scores on the three questionnaires were entered into a multiple regression analysis, the results showed that minimal patient identifying information (gender, marital status, and SES) did a better job of predicting compliance. These results underscore the complexities of accurately assessing and measuring compliance in asthma sufferers. Suggestions for future research are described.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pacific.edu/oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-3711 |
| Date | 01 January 1998 |
| Creators | Ashmore, Jamile Abraham |
| Publisher | Scholarly Commons |
| Source Sets | University of the Pacific |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |
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