ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1606403
This article is part of the Research TopicPatient-Centered Care: Strengthening Trust and Communication in Healthcare RelationshipsView all 16 articles
Research on the Measurement of Doctor-Patient Communication Quality Scale
Provisionally accepted
- 1Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China
- 2Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
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The number of medical disputes in China has been increasing, highlighting the urgent need to improve doctor-patient relationships.Objective: To improve doctor-patient relationships and enhance communication, a scale for measuring doctor-patient communication quality(DPCQ) was developed.Based on existing relevant foreign scales, questionnaire items were designed to collect patients' perceptions of doctor-patient communication quality.Outpatients from a selected hospital were chosen as the study population, and 300 questionnaires were randomly sampled. SPSS 26 was used for preliminary item screening through dispersion trend analysis, t-tests, and Pearson correlation analysis.Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to assess the reliability of the questionnaire. Structural validity was examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) in R 4.4.3. Convergent and discriminant validity were evaluated using average variance extracted (AVE), composite reliability (CR), and maximum shared variance (MSV). Results: The EFA identified two factors: Factor 1 (Interactive Communication and Emotional Support) and Factor 2 (Health Education and Behavioral Guidance), with a cumulative variance contribution rate of 63.81%. The results of the CFA indicated an acceptable model fit: χ²/df = 3.57, AGFI = 0.837, RMSEA = 0.093, CFI = 0.945, NFI = 0.926, PGFI = 0.609, and PNFI = 0.733. The final version of the questionnaire demonstrated excellent internal consistency, with a Cronbach's α coefficient of 0.950.In addition, AVE exceeded the threshold of 0.50, CR values were greater than 0.70, and MSV for each factor was lower than its corresponding AVE, supporting both convergent and discriminant validity of the scale.The scale for measuring doctor-patient communication quality demonstrates good reliability and validity, making it a suitable measurement tool for research on doctor-patient communication.
Keywords: Doctor-patient communication, Doctor-patient relationship, Communication quality, Measurement, scale
Received: 08 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shao, Wen, Zhang, Zhang and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liping Zhang, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, Anhui Province, China
Jiangjie Sun, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
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