Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of a European Portuguese version of the 8-item Morisky medication adherence scale

© 2018 Sociedade Portuguesa de Cardiologia Introduction and Objective: The 8-Item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) is one of the most widely used instruments to assess medication adherence, but a validated European Portuguese version of MMAS-8 does not exist. Our aim was to develop and validate a European Portuguese version of the MMAS-8. Methods: A process of translation and back-translation of the original MMAS-8 was performed. The questionnaire was administered in nine community pharmacies and one public hospital between March 2014 and September 2015. Adult patients taking at least one antihypertensive drug were invited to participate. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed and internal consistency, convergent validity and concurrent validity were examined. Results: A total of 472 patients were enrolled in the study. The mean MMAS-8 score obtained was 6.74±1.39. One hundred and thirty-two patients were classified as low adherers (28%), 181 (38.3%) as medium adherers and 159 (33.7%) as high adherers. For the factorial structure of the Portuguese version of the MMAS-8, the fit indices of the final model (chi-square [18] 48.465, p