PDB115 - IS USING MMAS-8 ALONE RELIABLE AND NONBIAS WHEN MEASURING MEDICATION ADHERENCE?

Abstract

One of the most common reasons for uncontrolled diabetes medicine (DM) is non-adherence to medications. There is currently an alarming increase in the prevalence of Type 2 DM among the adult population in Qatar. Previous studies suggested that the efficacy of medication adherence interventions might be improved by applying the Stages of Change theory of behavior change. In this study, we aimed to assess the social desirability bias while using MMAS-8 among Type 2 DM patients in Qatar. MMAS-8 was the main method used to measure adherence level among T2DM. In order to ensure that social desirability bias while using MMAS-8 was not a prominent limitation, proportion of days covered (PDC) was used to calculate medication adherence for participants who had sufficient data (n=117). PDC is a conservative objective measure of adherence (i.e. number of days in the period covered / the number of days in the time period) × 100. A percentage of 80% or higher obtained from PDC is considered high adherence. An interrater reliability analysis using the Kappa statistic was performed to determine consistency and degree of agreement between MMAS-8 and PDC when measuring medication adherence. PDC was calculated for 117 participants, and the results indicated a significant moderate agreement between MMAS-8 and PDC’s assessment of medication adherence [κ = 0.436; (p < 0.001), 95% CI (0.504, 0.848)]. The scores obtained from PDC were similar to those obtained from MMAS-8, suggesting social desirability biases were unlikely to have been important.