Development of the Consumer Assessment of Pharmacy Services survey.

Objectives: To develop and test a tool for obtaining patient evaluations of the quality of pharmacy services provided in ambulatory settings.

Design: Descriptive, exploratory, nonexperimental study.

Setting: United States from June 1, 2006, through May 31, 2007.

Participants: 895 individuals who obtained prescription medications from participating pharmacies.

Intervention: Items were evaluated for inclusion in composite scales based on factor analysis and frequency of missing data. Standard psychometric methods were used to assess the reliability and construct validity of the resulting three composite and three global-item measures.

Main Outcome Measure: Patient assessment of the quality of ambulatory care pharmacy services.

Results: Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a subset of 15 items measuring three aspects of pharmacy services (General Staff Communication, Health- and Medication-Focused Communication, and Clarity of Written Information about Medications) provided excellent fit to the data. Cronbach's alphas for these scales were greater than 0.80. The three scales and corresponding three global ratings of quality reliably described differences among providers of pharmacy services.

Conclusion: These data provide support for the reliability and validity of the Consumer Assessment of Pharmacy Services survey. Although preliminary results regarding reliability and validity are promising, further study of the survey is warranted.