The Patient Reactions Assessment: A Brief Measure of the Quality of the Patient-Provider Medical Relationship

This article reports 3 studies in the development of the Patient Reactions Assessment (PRA). The PRA is composed of three 5-item scales designed to measure the perceived quality of the informative (Patient Information Index) and affective (Patient Affective Index) behaviors of the provider and the patient's perceived ability to initiate communication (Patient Communication Index) about the illness. The PRA was constructed according to factor-analytic procedures using cancer patients as subjects. The PRA and its subscales demonstrated high internal consistency. Concurrent validity for the PRA was shown by its ability to differentiate known groups of providers with respect to quality of patient relationships. As predicted, replicated confirmatory factor analyses supported the conceptual model on which the scale was constructed and indicated that the subscales represented related but separate relationship factors.