Development and validation of a theory-based instrument to predict community pharmacists’ intention to provide pharmaceutical care services

Predicting pharmacists’ intention to provide Pharmaceutical Care (PC) and identifying modifiable factors associated with their intention can aid in the design and tailoring of behavior-based interventions to promote the adoption of PC as a standard of pharmacy practice. There is a need for valid and reliable instruments that are theoretically grounded to measure these factors. To develop and test the psychometric properties of the “Pharmaceutical Care Intention (PCI) scale” to identify socio-cognitive factors associated with community pharmacists’ intention to provide PC services to patients with chronic conditions. A self-administered questionnaire was developed in English and translated into Arabic, guided by constructs derived from a modified Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework and a thorough review of the PC literature. The questionnaire was reviewed for face and content validity, pilot tested, and then administered to a sample of community pharmacists in Alexandria, Egypt. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to identify and refine the underlying dimensional structure of the PCI scale and test for its convergent and discriminant validity. Reliability was assessed by computing Cronbach's α. Out of the 109 approached pharmacists, 97 usable responses were analyzed (response rate = 89%). EFA resulted in a 23-item, 6-factor solution explaining 52.14% of the variance in responses and providing evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. The resulting factors aligned with the modified TPB constructs: intention (α = 0.74), attitude (α = 0.89), subjective norm (α = 0.58), perceived behavioral control to identify (α = 0.66) and intervene (α = 0.82) to address drug-related problems, and perceived moral obligation (α = 0.72). Cronbach's α of the pooled items of the PCI scale was 0.77. The PCI scale is a parsimonious, theory-driven instrument with acceptable construct validity and reliability to examine factors associated with community pharmacists’ intention to provide PC.