Psychometric evaluation of the English language Person-centred Climate Questionnaire--staff version.

Objective: The present study aimed to evaluate psychometric properties of the English language Person-centred Climate Questionnaire--staff version (PCQ-S).

Background: Person-centred care emphasizes the individual's perspective in the care process. However, the concept is subject to some debate and few measurement tools exist.

Methods: During 2 months in 2007, the Swedish PCQ-S was translated to English and distributed to a sample of Australian hospital staff (n = 52). Psychometric evaluation using statistical estimates of validity and reliability were performed.

Results: The 14-item questionnaire showed high reliability as Cronbach's alpha was satisfactory for the total scale (0.89), and for the four subscales: 0.87, 0.79, 0.82 and 0.69. Test-retest reliability were evaluated in a subsample of 40 staff and resulted in P-values >0.05 between mean scores of the PCQ-S at test and retest, r-values between 0.6 and 0.9, and a two-way mixed effects model, single measures intra-class correlations of 0.75 with a confidence interval of 0.58-0.86. Validity of the scale needs further evaluation.

Conclusions: The English PCQ-S makes possible studies of associations between person-centredness and different organizational systems, environments, staff characteristics and health and managerial styles. However, scale validity needs further evaluation.