Background: We aimed to translate, cross-culturally adapt, and validate the General Medication Adherence Scale (GMAS) into Vietnamese.
Methods: We followed the guidelines of Beaton et al. during the translation and adaptation process. In Stage I, two translators translated the GMAS to Vietnamese. Stage II involved synthesizing the two translations. Stage III featured a back translation. Stage IV included an expert committee review and the creation of the pre-final version of the GMAS, and in stage V, pilot testing was conducted on 42 Vietnamese patients with type 2 diabetes. The psychometric validation process evaluated the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. The internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed by Cronbach's alpha and Spearman's correlation coefficients. The construct validity was determined by an association examination between the levels of adherence and patient characteristics. The content validity was based on the opinion and assessment score by the expert committee. The Vietnamese version of the GMAS was created, including 11 items divided into three domains. There was a good equivalence between the English and the Vietnamese versions of the GMAS in all four criteria.
Results: One hundred and seventy-seven patients were participating in the psychometric validation process. Cronbach's alpha was acceptable for all questionnaire items (0.817). Spearman's correlation coefficient of the test-retest reliability was acceptable for the GMAS (0.879). There are significant correlations between medication adherence levels and occupation, income, and the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ) score regarding construct validity.
Conclusions: The Vietnamese version of GMAS can be considered a reliable and valid tool for assessing medication adherence in Vietnamese patients.
Keywords: Vietnamese; adaptation; diabetes; medication adherence; translation; validation.