Evaluating Health Service Delivery to Children With Chronic Conditions and Their Families: Development of a Refined Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC−20)

TLDR

MPOC measures parents' perceptions of health‑care professional behaviors. The study develops a shorter, improved 20‑item version of the MPOC, called MPOC‑20. MPOC‑20 was derived from the original MPOC through conceptual and empirical methods, refined for formatting and clarity, and preserves the five‑scale family‑centered structure. The MPOC‑20 demonstrates strong internal consistency, reliability, and validity, and is useful for program evaluation, quality assurance, and research.

Abstract

Abstract This article describes the development of a shorter and improved version of the 56-item Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC) to create MPOC−20. MPOC is a measure of parents' perceptions of the extent to which specific behaviors of health care professionals occur. MPOC−20 is a self-administered, parent-completed questionnaire that was derived from the original MPOC, using both conceptual and empirical approaches. Further refinements to MPOC−20 were made in its formatting and clarity of response options. MPOC−20 retains the same conceptual structure of five scales that reflect the essential features of family-centered service. We provide evidence of good internal consistency, reliability, and validity using pre-existing data sets and a new independent sample from a province-wide survey. MPOC−20 offers users a measurement option that is useful for program evaluation and quality assurance activities as well as for research purposes.