Desarrollo y validación de un cuestionario para medir la reputación de los hospitales

objective: to design and validate a questionnaire (mefio) to measure the social reputation of a hospital from patients′ and citizens′ perspective. material and methods: we performed a literature review to define the concept of a hospital's social reputation. four nominal groups were conducted to set up the a priori factors of the mefio questionnaire. these groups consisted of 47 managers and health professionals and 32 potential customers. reactive items were identified and a pilot test was conducted to examine comprehension. a random sample of 385 subjects was selected. ceiling and floor effects, internal consistency, reliability, and construct and criteria validity were analyzed. results: a total of 343 validated questionnaires (response rate 89%) were collected. the mefio questionnaire has 21 items grouped into five factors. all items had an item-total correlation higher than 0.30. all factor loads were higher than 0.5; between 66.2% and 80.4% of the variance was explained and cronbach's alpha was 0.7- 0.88. the construct-composite-reliability scores were higher than 0.7. standardized scores in the convergent discriminant validity test were higher than 0.6. the factors explained 50% of the variability in satisfaction with the health care received (f = 66.5; p <0.001). conclusion: the mefio questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool to measure the five dimensions that define the reputation of a hospital in spain.