The development of an Incontinence Treatment Motivation Questionnaire for patients undergoing pelvic floor physiotherapy in the treatment of stress incontinence.

Sarma S, Hawthorne G, Thakkar K, Hayes W, Moore KH

The aim of this research was to develop a motivation questionnaire regarding perseverance in pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) supervised by physiotherapists for stress urinary incontinence. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted in women with stress urinary incontinence that revealed 15 common themes; 117 items were constructed and reviewed by continence advisors. Surviving items were administered to 210 women. Data were analysed for item properties, factor analysis was used to examine the questionnaire structure and tests of convergence/divergence used to check for sensitivity. The resulting Incontinence Treatment Motivation Questionnaire (ITMQ) comprises 18-items in five scales, assessing attitudes towards treatment, reasons for not doing PFMT, living with incontinence, desire for treatment and the effect of incontinence severity on PFMT .

This study represents the first effort to develop a motivation scale for PFMT. This validated Motivation Questionnaire is an instrument to test the impact of motivation upon cure, in PFMT.

International Urogynecology Journal of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction, 2009 May 15, online article ahead of print

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