Development of the perceived community pharmacy service quality scale (PCPSQ) : client perspective

Abstract

To develop the perceived community pharmacy service quality (PCPSQ) scale to assess the clients' perception on quality of pharmacy service in community pharmacy. The method involved four steps (1) sub-scale and items development, (2) expert reviews of the scale, (3) pre-testing of the scale, and (4) large sample testing of the scale. One hundred drugstore clients were questioned on "quality and services demaned from drugstores" using interviewing and small group iscussion. The information started the initial PCPSQ with 150 items in accordance with the concepts of Donabedian's theory, ServQual, and client satisfaction. The 150-item PCPSQ consisted of 60 items under the "structure", 71 under the "process", and 19 under the "outcome" dimensions. The 0-10 agreement continuous scale format was used with 10 reflecting most strongly agree and 0 for most strongly disagree. The last item was added requesting respondents to rate the overall drugstore performance. After content validation via expert review, the scale was pre-tested in 231 clients. The final-to-test PCPSQ for the large scale data collection was reduced to 100 items with 37, 48, and 15 items in the three dimensions respectively. A sample of 50 clients per drugstore totaling 1,950 was recruited from 39 drugstores. The exploratory factor analysis was conducted using principal axis factoring and direct oblimin rotation. The item analysis was followed and confirmed by the split sample technique. The final PCPSQ remained 30 items under six subscales (1) Physical and structural facilities of care (3 items), (2) Process evaluation of technical care - provider aspect (8 items), (3) Process evaluation of technical care - counseling aspect (5 items), (4) Process evaluation of technical care - labeling aspect (5) Process evaluation of social functioning - disease and self-care understanding aspect (4 items), and (6) Outcome evaluation - overall satisfaction with visit (5 items). The construct validity was tested and the internal consistency of all dimensions was ranged 0.6970-0.8860. These findings confirmed preliminary evidence for the validity and reliability of the PCPSQ scale