Comparison of anonymous versus nonanonymous responses to a medication adherence questionnaire in patients with Parkinson’s disease

Figures & data

Table 1 Characteristics of both groups (nonanonymous self-report and anonymous self-report) and items of the Stendal Adherence to Medication Score

Demographical characteristics	Self-report questionnaire		P-value
	Nonanonymous	Anonymous
Age	70±9 45–82	72±9 44–83	0.370
Number of drugs per day	6±3 2–14	6±3 2–15	0.371
Sum Stendal Adherence to Medication Score	5.4±6.8 0–33	5.4±5.8 0–31	0.874
Sex			1.000
Male	24	24
Female	16	16
Marital status			0.583
Married	30	31
Missing value	0	1
Single	1	2
Divorced or widowed	9	6
Graduation			0.522
High	15	15
Low	13	9
Middle	12	16
Occupation			0.185
Employed	4	3
Not employed	3	0
Pensioned	33	37
Organizes daily medication to be taken			0.216
Caregiver	6	10
Health care service	2	0
Patient	32	30

Note: Metric data are given as mean ± SD and range, categorical data are given as number, and t-test or chi-squared test was used for comparison between both groups.

Table 2 Stendal Adherence to Medication Score (SAMS)

		For all	For most	For half	For some	For none
		0	1	2	3	4
1	Do you know the reason for taking your medication?
2	Do you know the dosages of your medication?
3	Are you familiar with the timing for taking the medication?
		All	Most	Half	Some	None
		0	1	2	3	4
4	Do you take your medication regularly?
5	Do you know the names of medications you are taking?
		Never	Rare	Sometimes	Often	Mostly
		0	1	2	3	4
6	Do you forget to take your medication?
7	Are you untroubled about taking the medication?
8	Do you stop taking your medication when you feel better?
9	Do you stop taking your medication if you sometimes feel worse after taking the medication?
10	Do you take any wrong or other/unprescribed medications (such as those of your partner)?
	If you think you have side effects due to of the medications (such as tremors, nausea, etc)
11	Do you reduce the dose without consulting a doctor?
12	Do you not take the medication for a while, ie, take a break?
13	If you feel you have to take too many, do you stop taking those medications you consider to be less important than the others without consulting your doctor?
	If you forget or omit your medication, do you forget it…
14	in the morning?
15	at noon?
16	in the evening?
17	Do you deliberately not take medications you do not consider important, but take the rest?
18	If you take medication as a syringe or a weekly tablet, have you ever forgotten it?

Figure 1 Comparison of each item of the Stendal Adherence to Medication Score (SAMS) between both groups.

Notes: Only item 6 (“Do you forget your medications?”) was significantly (*P=0.017) higher in the anonymously collected data. All other items of the SAMS did not significantly differ between both groups (ns).