Abstract
Background: The development of safe and effective mental health services is a priority. This requires valid measures of personal recovery, yet these tools are not embedded in routine clinical practice. Brief “patient reported measures” are most likely to be acceptable to service-users and clinicians. The 4-item “Hope, Agency and Opportunity” (HAO) was co-produced to assess recovery outcomes and experience of mental health services.
Aim: To evaluate the psychometric properties of the HAO.
Method: A clinical sample from secondary healthcare services and a non-clinical sample were assessed at baseline and two weeks, on measures of personal recovery.
Results: Factor analysis indicated goodness of fit for the HAO with both clinical and non-clinical samples. The measure demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, moderate to strong construct validity and substantial test-retest reliability over two weeks.
Conclusions: The HAO demonstrates satisfactory psychometric properties. Co-production of the measure confers clinical credibility. The brevity of the tool means it can be incorporated into routine clinical practice to drive improvements in service quality.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Charlotte Deveson, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, for her help with data collection; Elizabeth White-Ripley, Diane Hannon and David Watson from Solent Mind, for their support in recruiting participants; and Dr Claire Hart, University of Southampton, UK, for statistical guidance.
Declaration of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Thanks to a blind reviewer for noting that this represents an acceptable level of consistency given length of scale.