Validation of a questionnaire for consumers' perception of service quality in community pharmacy.

BACKGROUND: Consumer insights are vital to gain an understanding of service quality and enable its accurate measurement. Our team has previously developed a theory-based, qualitatively and quantitatively-informed service quality questionnaire for Australian community pharmacies with a price-focused marketing strategy (PFMS). The questionnaire assess 6 domains of service quality: Health and Medicines Advice, Non-Prescription Service, Relationship Quality, Technical Quality, Environmental Quality, and Health Outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to validate the questionnaire through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using data from customers attending pharmacies with a service-focused marketing strategy (SFMS).

METHODS: A 31 item questionnaire was administered to convenience sample of customers from 3 SFMS pharmacies. The collected data was analysed using CFA. Model parameters were estimated using the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) method. The model was revised on inspection of modification indices and fit statistics and tested for construct validity, construct reliability and measurement invariance.

RESULTS: A total of 319 responses were collected for CFA. On examination of the modification indices, 4 items were deleted. The fit statistics for the final model were as follows: Satorra-Bentler scaled χ2  = 211.4, df = 155, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.031 (90% confidence interval = 0.016-0.042). Construct validity of all constructs was established from positive convergent and discriminant validity tests. The composite reliability values for all constructs were ≥0.7, thus confirming construct reliability. A positive test for strong invariance confirmed that the model constructs are comparable across regional and metropolitan settings, gender, age and education level.

CONCLUSIONS: This study has established the validity of the questionnaire as a measure of consumer perceptions of community pharmacy service quality. The tool can be applied in Australian community pharmacies in both metropolitan and regional settings to guide improvements in aspects of service provision.