Exploring laypeople’s epistemic beliefs about medicine – a factor-analytic survey study

Dorothe Kienhues,Rainer Bromme

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-12-759

Abstract

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and knowing (the EBAM). Such beliefs should be a target of increased research interest because they influence how people handle medical information, for example in shared decision making.MethodsAn online survey was completed by 284 participants. Items assessed different aspects of laypeople’s epistemic beliefs about medicine and explicitly focused on the appearance of medical knowledge in everyday life and the evaluation of different sources as a way to justify knowledge.ResultsFactor analysis yielded a five-factor solution for the instrument. Dimensions covered by the instrument are certainty of medical knowledge, credibility of medical textbooks, credibility of medical information on the Internet, justification of medical knowledge, and preliminarity of medical knowledge.ConclusionsResults indicate that laypeople have meaningful beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and the trustworthiness of different sources. The instrument developed seems promising for measuring laypeople’s epistemic beliefs about medicine, which may help to increase patients’ compliance in medical decision making.

Highlights

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and knowing
Maximum Likelihood (ML) was chosen as the model-fitting method [42,43] and we decided for an oblique rotation method, because the statistical independence of epistemic dimensions in the sense of uncorrelated factors is questionable
Results indicated that measuring laypeople’s epistemic beliefs about medicine is possible with a questionnaire, they showed that laypeople have meaningful beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and the trustworthiness of different sources

Summary

Introduction

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of medical knowledge and knowing (the EBAM). Such beliefs should be a target of increased research interest because they influence how people handle medical information, for example in shared decision making. The patient will probably search for additional information on what to do on the Internet [3] (Google finds about 104.000.000 results for the keyword “cholesterol”) There, he will come across web pages with statements on the dangerousness as well as on the harmlessness of eating butter. He will find web pages that advertise a specific drug to lower cholesterol and Internet forums where patients describe (adventurous) alternative

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Discussion

Conclusion