@article{ref1,
title="The Relational Aspects of Care Questionnaire: item reduction and scoring using inpatient and accident and emergency data in England",
journal="Patient related outcome measures",
year="2018",
author="Kelly, Laura and Sizmur, Steve and Käsbauer, Susanne and King, Jenny and Cooper, Robyn and Jenkinson, Crispin and Graham, Chris",
volume="9",
number="",
pages="173-181",
abstract="PURPOSE: The Relational Aspects of Care Questionnaire (RAC-Q) is an electronic instrument which has been developed to assess staff's interactions with patients when delivering relational care to inpatients and those accessing accident and emergency (A&E) services. The aim of this study was to reduce the number of questionnaire items and explore scoring methods for &quot;not applicable&quot; response options. <br><br>PATIENTS AND METHODS: Participants (n=3928) were inpatients or A&E attendees across six participating hospital trusts in England during 2015-2016. The instrument, consisting of 20 questionnaire items, was administered by trained hospital volunteers over a period of 10 months. Items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis to confirm unidimensionality, and the number of items was reduced using a range of a priori psychometric criteria. Two alternative approaches to scoring were undertaken, one treated &quot;not applicable&quot; responses as missing data, while the second adopted a problem score approach where &quot;not applicable&quot; was considered &quot;no problem with care.&quot; RESULTS: Two short-form RAC-Qs with alternative scoring options were identified. The first (the RAC-Q-12) contained 12 items, while the second scoring option (the RAC-Q-14) contained 14 items. Scores from both short forms correlated highly with the full 20-item parent form score (RAC-Q-12, <i>r</i>=0.93 and RAC-Q-14, <i>f</i>=0.92), displayed high internal consistency (Cronbach's α: RAC-Q-12=0.92 and RAC-Q-14=0.89) and had high levels of agreement (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]=0.97 for both scales). <br><br>CONCLUSION: The RAC-Q is designed to offer near-real-time feedback on staff's interactions with patients when delivering relational care. The new short-form RAC-Qs and their respective method of scoring are reflective of scores derived using the full 20-item parent form. The new short-form RAC-Qs may be incorporated into inpatient surveys to enable the comparison of ward or hospital performance. Using either the RAC-Q-12 or the RAC-Q-14 offers a method to reduce missing data and response fatigue.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1179-271X",
doi="10.2147/PROM.S157213",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/PROM.S157213"
}