Development of an In-Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire for the Chinese Population

Background: Patients’ satisfaction has been considered as a crucial measurement of health care quality. Our objective was to develop a reliable and practical questionnaire for the assessment of in-patients’ satisfaction in Chinese people, and report the current situation of in-patients’ satisfaction in the central south area of China through a large-scale cross-sectional study. Design: In order to generate the questionnaire, we reviewed previous studies, interviewed related people, held discussions, refined questionnaire items after the pilot study, and finally conducted a large cross-sectional survey to test the questionnaire. Setting: This study was conducted in three A-level hospitals in the Hunan province, China. Results: There were 6640 patients in this large-scale survey (another 695 patients in the pilot study). A factor analysis on the data from the pilot study generated four dimensions, namely, doctors’ care quality, nurses’ care quality, quality of the environment and facilities, and comprehensive quality. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for each dimension were above 0.7 and the inter-subscale correlation was between 0.72 and 0.83. The overall in-patient satisfaction rate was 89.6%. Conclusion: The in-patient satisfaction questionnaire was proved to have optimal internal consistency, reliability, and validity.