Turkish Adaptation of General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ) : Validity and Reliability Study

Gökçe İşcan, Özden Gökdemi̇r, Canan Tuz, Nilüfer Emre, Halime Seda Küçükerdem, Olgu Aygün

Keywords: General Practice Assessment, GPAQ, Turkish validity and reliability

Background:
The "Family Medicine Model," focused on individual/family-oriented delivery and serves as the cornerstone of primary health care services, was established in 2003 as part of the Health Transformation Program, a comprehensive reform project. In December 2010, it was implemented throughout Turkey. Although patient satisfaction ratings are commonly used in assessments, we discovered a need for scales that evaluate the Turkish family medicine system, including family physicians, staff, and the appointment system, because assessing the system is critical for progress.

Research questions:
1.Which scale can compensate for the lack of general evaluation that we've identified, allowing us to get a general assessment of Turkey's Family Medicine System's progress?
2.Is the General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ) a valid and accurate scale in Turkish society?

Method:
Permission to use the GPAQ scale was obtained via email from Prof. Dr. Martin Roland, a team member that created the original scale. The GPAQ, which consists of 43 questions, was translated from English into Turkish by five independent researchers who adhered to WHO linguistic validation standards. After each team member finished their translation, a discussion session was held to create a standard text and resolve any differences between translations. A different pair of translators returned the Turkish-v1 draft form to English. A linguist then analyzed the agreed-upon text, and the first Turkish version was obtained. This scale was developed to be used in conjunction with the EUROPEP Satisfaction Family Scale, the most similar scale, and has previously been validated. After test-retest part, we intend to begin in February 2022 using face-to-face and online platforms and enroll as many patients as possible.

Results:
The study is still ongoing, and no conclusions have been reached. The results may be made available at the congress.

Conclusions:
The GPAQ has been culturally and linguistically modified as an evaluation tool in general practice.

Points for discussion:
Is there another scale we could use to compare?