Development and Validation of the Return and Disposal of Unused Medications Questionnaire (ReDiUM) in Malaysia

Abstract

The aim of our study was to develop and validate the return and disposal of unused medications (ReDiUM), as there are currently no validated tools available (worldwide) to assess this. The ReDiUM was developed by an expert panel. It was then administered to community-dwelling adults, who could understand English, at baseline and 2 weeks later. A total of 338/354 participants agreed to participate (response rate = 95.4%). Flesch reading ease was 60. The overall Cronbach's α was 0.703 (range = 0.609-0.762). At test-retest, κ values ranged from 0.244 to 0.523. Median total knowledge score was 60% (interquartile range = 40% to 70%). The majority of participants (94.4%) knew that improper drug disposal has harmful effects on the environment. However, their knowledge was low (11.2%) regarding the disposal of pressurized metered-dose inhalers in the garbage. The ReDiUM was found to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice on the ReDiUM in Malaysia.

Development, translation, and validation of a bilingual questionnaire on unused medications in homes

“…All the three KAP constructs showed good reliability by the resultant Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.68, 0.82, and 0.84, respectively. This was consistent with a Malaysian study where the overall Cronbach’s alpha value was 0.727, indicating adequate internal consistency reliability ( Sim et al, 2018 ). Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the new scale was 0.68 for knowledge, which is considered slightly low but acceptable for knowledge scale according to Berger and Hänze ( Taber, 2018 ).…”

“…To our knowledge, this study is the first to develop, translate and validate a questionnaire that assesses patients’ KAP towards unused medications in Qatar homes, which may assist in developing effective intervention programs to manage unused medications and various consequent impacts. This is similar to a study done in Malaysia related to the return and disposal of unused medications (ReDiUM) ( Sim et al, 2018 ), and another one to study various aspects of unused medications among patients and healthcare providers in Malta ( West, 2015 ). KAP study was also found useful to seek status of disposal of unused and expired pharmaceuticals among community in Ethiopia ( Ayele and Mamu, 2018 ).…”

“…To determine the internal consistency reliability of items in the questionnaire, Cronbach’s Alpha test was conducted. A Cronbach’s Alpha coeffient above 0.65 was considered adequate for each domain ( Sim et al, 2018 , Taber, 2018 ).…”

Knowledge, attitude and disposing practice of unused and expired medicines among the general public in Malaysia

“…The questionnaire consisted of five sections. Sections A, B and C were adopted directly from the Return and Disposal of Unused Medications (ReDiUM) questionnaire, a pre‐validated English questionnaire in Malaysia . Section A of the knowledge section contains 10 questions, each of which has question having ‘True’, ‘False’ and ‘Do not know’ options.…”

“…While some previous studies gave some insight, these studies also restricted the collection of data to particular university, group or state with instruments not previously validated in the population of Malaysia . The aim of this study was therefore to obtain a more comprehensive picture from the public across Malaysia with a pre‐validated questionnaire in order to understand their knowledge, attitude and practice of disposing of unwanted medications.…”