Validation of the "SmoCess-GP" instrument - a short patient questionnaire for assessing the smoking cessation activities of general practitioners: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: We developed an instrument assessing the extent of smoking cessation activities by general practitioners (GPs) within the Cologne Smoking Study (CoSmoS). The objective of the present study was to examine further psychometric quality of the "SmoCess-GP" instrument (Smoking Cessation by General Practitioners). METHODS: 127 current smokers who had participated in the Cologne Smoking Study (CoSmoS) were included in our analyses. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to examine the model fit and to retest the single-factor structure of the instrument using the Mplus software. Further construct validity was tested with bivariate analysis using an instrument which measures patients' trust in physicians. RESULTS: CFA supported the unidimensional structure of the instrument. The factor loadings exceed the threshold of ≥ 0.50. All indicator reliabilities were higher than 0.30. The composite reliability was 0.86 and the average variance extracted (AVE) resulted in a value of 0.50. The calculation of global fit indices identified a CFI value of 1.00 and for TLI a value of 1.02. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) indicates that 0% of the information is not accounted for by the model. The chi-square value was χ(2)(df = 6 )= 4.63 (p = 0.59). Analysis of discriminant validity resulted in a non-significiant correlation of r = 0.092 (p = 0.350). CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate preliminary evidence for the construct validity of the "SmoCess-GP" instrument which therefore appears to be a promising tool for analyzing the extent of smoking cessation advice offered by GPs from the patients' perspective. Future research should examine the psychometric properties in a population based sample, further improvements of the instrument and should apply other methods of validation.