The Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of Medication Adherence Rating Scale / 대한정신약물학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Finding out patient's non-adherence to medication is an important work for treating schizophrenia. The Medication Adherence Rating Scale is a self-report form, which can simply measure medication adherence in psychosis. We evaluated the reliability and validity of the Korean version of Medication Adherence Rating Scale (KMARS). METHODS: Eighty-one individuals with schizophrenia completed the self-administered questionnaires including KMARS, Brief Adherence Rating Scale (BARS), Korean version of Drug Attitude Inventory-10 (KDAI-10) and Korean version of Medication Adherence Questionnaire (KMAQ). Psychometric properties of the KMARS were analyzed. RESULTS: The KMARS has an acceptable internal consistency (alpha=0.71). The KMARS total scores are moderately correlated with BARS (r=0.44, p<0.01), KDAI-10 (r=0.55, p<0.01) and KMAQ (r=0.62, p<0.01). As the result of factor analysis, the structure of the KMARS is different from original scale, but the KMARS can assess not only adherence behavior but also subjective response to medication. Among the questions item 5, "I take my medication only when I am sick", should be used carefully, because it has ambiguous meaning in Korean. CONCLUSION: KMARS is a simple and reliable tool for measuring medication adherence in psychosis.