Language, income rates factor into trust of school immunization programs

The internal consistency of a modified scale that assessed patient trust in school-located immunization programs varied depending on primary language and income status, according to data presented at the 2014 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine Annual Meeting.

Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, including Infectious Diseases in Children Editorial Board member Amy B. Middleman, MD, MPH, distributed questionnaires to middle school students to assess the reliability of a modified patient trust scale. Children and parents were given the questionnaires before a service project was initiated at the school. The project provided vaccines via a mobile school-located immunization program. Questionnaires were available in Spanish and English. The internal consistency of a five-item patient trust scale was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha.

Amy B. Middleman

Researchers analyzed 1,913 questionnaires and found that 84% of respondents identified as Hispanic; 68% were primarily Spanish-speaking; and 40% completed the questionnaires in Spanish. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.71 for the modified scale and varied when controlling for demographic variables. Internal consistency was higher for the Spanish version of the survey compared with the English version (0.76 vs. 0.64), for those who spoke English at home vs. Spanish (0.79 vs. 0.68), and for those whose annual household income was more than $50,000 (0.81 vs. 0.71).

“These data suggest a need to further evaluate and modify this scale for populations with significant variation in language variables and socioeconomic status,” the researchers concluded.

For more information:

Wall KE. Abstract 157. Presented at: SAHM 2014; March 23-26; Austin, Texas.

Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine Public Demonstration grants through Merck.