Measuring confidence in physician: Adaptation and validation of TPS in HIV individuals from Mexico

Introduction. Patient-physician relationship is associated with ART adherence and medical follow-up in people living with HIV (PLWH). Patient’s trust in their doctor is a key component of patient-physician relationship, so adequate and reliable instruments to measure this component are important to evaluate its impact on health outcomes. Objective. To evaluate the psychometric properties of a translated and adapted version of Trust in Physician Scale (TPS) in Mexican PLWH. Method. A cross-sectional study was carried out in PLWH. Scale was translated to Spanish and culturally adapted. Sociodemographic and TPS data were collected online due to COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analysis were carried out in two different samples. Results. Data from 215 participants was used to EFA. Five items were eliminated due to low correlation with total scale. Final Cronbach's alpha was .93. A single-factor structure explained 68.8% of the variance. CFA in a sample of 140 participants confirmed adequate fit indices (χ2[7] = 13.015 p = .072, CFI = .997, RMSEA = .057, SMRS = .0015). Discussion and conclusion. The final scale was unifactorial and it is made up of six items instead of 11. It seems to be a valid and reliable scale to measure patient’s trust in doctors in Mexican PLWH. Further studies are recommended to provide evidence of convergent validity to the instrument.