Attitudes of GPs to the diagnosis and management of impaired glucose tolerance: The practitioners’ attitudes to hyperglycaemia (PAtH) questionnaire☆

Abstract 

Aims

To develop and pilot a survey instrument assessing general practitioners’ (GP) attitudes to the diagnosis and management of one form of pre-diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and to assess the performance of the questionnaire.

Methods

Qualitative data together with an audit were used to generate questionnaire items, which were then subjected to a process of pre-piloting and piloting to generate a finalised item list. The pilot questionnaire was sent to 222 principal GPs in three PCTs in South West England. The first fifty responders were asked to complete the questionnaire again 2 weeks later. Principal components analysis with a Varimax rotation was used to detect latent factors within the data that may help to explain the attitudes of GPs.

Results

The response rate after one reminder was 54.1%. Four robust factors were identified which were internally consistent (range of Cronbach's α=0.79–0.65), homogeneous (item-total correlations=0.60–0.21), and stable (test–retest correlation=0.74–0.58) accounting for 31.1% of the variance. The predictive validity of the item list was assessed (P=0.02 for factor 1).

Conclusions

The PAtH questionnaire identifies four factors that help to describe GPs attitudes to the diagnosis and management of IGT.

Keywords: Impaired glucose tolerance, General practice, Questionnaire