Abstract
BackgroundThe Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC) is a widely used questionnaire to measure the stigmatising attitudes of healthcare providers towards patients with mental health problems. The psychometric properties of the scale; however, have never been investigated in Hungary. We aimed to thoroughly explore the factor structure of the OMS-HC and examine the key psychometric properties of the Hungarian version.MethodsThe OMS-HC is a self-report questionnaire that measures the overall stigmatising attitude by a total score, and three subscales can be calculated: Attitude, Disclosure and Help-seeking, and Social Distance. Our study population included specialists and trainees in adult and child psychiatry (n = 211). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed, and higher-order factors were tested. We calculated the test-retest reliability on a subgroup of our sample (n = 31) with a follow-up period of 1 month. The concurrent validity of the scale was measured with the Mental Illness: Clinician’s Attitudes-4 scale (MICA-4).ResultsThree factors were extracted based on a parallel-analysis. A bifactor solution (a general factor and three specific factors) showed an excellent model-fit (root mean square error of approximation = 0.025, comparative fit index = 0.961, and Tucker-Lewis index = 0.944). The model-based reliability was low; however, the general factor showed acceptable reliability (coefficient omega hierarchical = 0.56). The scale demonstrated a good concurrent validity with the MICA-4 [intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.77]. The test-retest reliability was excellent for the general factor (ICC = 0.95) and good for the specific factors (ICC = 0.90, 0.88, and 0.84, respectively).ConclusionsThe three dimensions of the OMS-HC was confirmed, and the scale was found to be an adequate measure of the stigmatising attitude in Hungary. The bifactor model is more favourable as compared to the three correlated factor model; however, despite the excellent internal structure, its model-based reliability was low.
Highlights
The Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC) is a widely used questionnaire to measure the stigmatising attitudes of healthcare providers towards patients with mental health problems
Kassam compared the stigmatising attitude of psychiatrists to that of other medical specialists in Canada, and the results revealed that the scores for psychiatrists on every measure were significantly lower than the scores for family physicians, rural and emergency rural physicians, anaesthetists, and surgeons [17]
Since our confirmatory factor analysis on the 15-item version of the scale proposed by Modgill et al [19] indicated a good fit based on the absolute fit indices but a poor fit based on the relative indices, we aimed to explore its factor structure further
Summary
The Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC) is a widely used questionnaire to measure the stigmatising attitudes of healthcare providers towards patients with mental health problems. Several studies have shown that mental health professionals could express stigmatising attitudes towards their patients with mental illness [6,7,8,9,10,11]; to a lesser extent as compared with the other members of the society [12, 13]. The results of a Belgian study pointed out that the associative stigma of mental health care providers is related to more self-stigma and dissatisfaction of the clients besides the increased symptoms of burnout and less job satisfaction of mental health professionals themselves [18]. It is important to draw attention to the potentially deleterious impact of the stigmatising attitude of healthcare providers on their patients
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