Adaptation of the Evidence‐Based Practices Attitude Scale‐15 in Turkish Family Medicine Residents

Duygu A. Başer, Ezgi Agadayi, Seval Gönderen, Rabia Kahveci

Keywords: Family Medicine, Evidence‐Based Practices Attitude Scale, Evidence‐Based Practices, Scale Adaptation, Turkey

Background:
The evidence-based practice (EBP) is the bridge between research and practice and it is necessary to understand attitudes toward EBPs of physicians. Evaluation of family medicine residents' attitudes is essential to enable them to make more informed clinical decisions in clinical practice. Aim of this study is to to translate the Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale (EBPAS-15) in Turkish and to test its factor structure, reliability, and validity with a sample of family medicine residents.

Research questions:
Is EBPAS raliable and valid in Turkish family medicine residents?

Method:
This study was planned and applied as a methodological study. The original EBPAS-15 (a questionnaire assessing health professionals' attitudes to implementation of evidence-based practice) was translated into Turkish. To assess its validity and reliability, 151 family medicine residents answered the EBPAS-15 by web-based survey. In addition, relationships of family medicine residents' characteristics with EBPAS-15 total scores are examined.

Results:
The results showed that the EBPAS-15 has good internal consistency and re-liability. The Cronbach's alpha value for EBPAS-15 was 0.828. The scores of the two scales were highly correlated (ρ= 0.72). In the scale, there was no item with a total correlation value of less than 0.40. For this reason, no item was removed due to the high reliability value of all 15 items.

Conclusions:
The Turkish version of the EBPAS-15 shows mainly good validity and reliability. While our sample consisted of family medicine residents, our find-ings may not generalise to all physicians.

Points for discussion:
What are the limitations of this study?

What are the aspects of this study that could be improved?