Abstract
Background
MedRisk is one of the several available measurement tools developed to assess patient satisfaction with outpatient physical therapy services and has been adapted to different countries, including Brazil. However, the literature shows conflicting results regarding its dimensional structure.
Objective
To evaluate the Brazilian version of MedRisk for semantic equivalence to the original English version, followed by an assessment of its dimensional structure.
Methods
The original 18-item version was first submitted to translation and back-translation, followed by a pre-test on 55 patients (semantic equivalence phase). Another 326 patients were interviewed to assess the dimensional structure. An initial confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was followed by exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM).
Results
CFA was performed on the 16-item version agreed upon in the first phase, and indicated poor fit (RMSEA = 0.10, 90% CI: 0.08–0.12; CFI = 0.84; TLI = 0.79). The ensuing ESEM pointed to a four-factor structure, but five cross-loadings emerged, suggesting violation of the item factor specificity. High residual variances were also found in 3 items (≥0.70), which is indicative of poor item reliability.
Conclusion
Although semantic equivalence was achieved, several uncovered psychometric (configural and metric) shortcomings show that MedRisk still requires refinements before recommending its use in Brazilian health services.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.