Evaluation of a Study Instrument Assessing Community Pharmacies and Services Provided: Consumers' Perception

Objectives: The objective of this research is to assess and compare the degree of correlation and agreement between the three study instruments utilized in evaluation of community pharmacies and services provided based on consumer's perception. Methods: A cross sectional observational study on a convenient random sample of 100 respondents from Sungai Petain, Kedah, Malaysia was conducted by using pretested and validated questionnaires to evaluate the community pharmacies and the services provided by them based on consumers' perception. The data retrieved from the three set of questionnaires were coded based upon various variables into Microsoft Excel 2010 and were then exported to the IBM SPSS Version 22.0 to be analyzed. The Chi-square test and Kappa concordant test were used to test the statistical significance and the degree of agreement between the three domains utilized respectively. Results: Totally 41 males and 59 females participated in this study. The result analyses clearly showed that despite the similarities, there did not exist any degree of agreement between the three instruments (by Spearman's correlational test, Kappa concordant test). Fortifying this observation was the score grades assessment, wherein all the three sets, especially the PSQ-3 and PSQ-18 gave extremely varied scores and corresponding score grades. Conclusion: The principal investigator thus concluded (based on the study parameters set) that though the three instruments measure and analyze the same concept, each of them are distinctive by themselves. This conclusion implies that for future research involving patients' satisfaction with community pharmacy services, the aspiring researcher must exercise extreme caution while combining these three questionnaires to create an adapted version of a new questionnaire to assess the same.