Morisky Medication Adherence Scale: Questionnaires On Health, And Behaviors

Data Variables:

The data collated via the questionnaires included the following variables: age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, highest level of education attained, working conditions, transport availability, smoking status, diabetes duration, cultural factors (dress wear, behaviors in Ramadan, perception towards obesity), number of anti-diabetic medication, insulin therapy, the Depression, Anxiety and Stress scale (DASS-21) and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) score. The Morisky Medication Adherence Scale -8 (MMAS-8) score was used to measure the outcome of adherence to medication. MMAS-8. Glycated hemoglobin (HBA1c (%)) was used to check the validity of the MMAS-8 score in this cohort as a measure of adherence to medication
For this study the 8-item model of this scale was used; patients were asked 8 questions designed to determine which factors affect how well they adhered to their medication regimen. Table 1.

Table 1: The 8 questions asked to determine medication adherence based on the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale Questions
1 Do you sometimes forget to take your medicine?
2 People sometimes miss taking their medicines for reasons other than forgetting. Thinking over the past 2 weeks, were there any days when you did not take your medicine?
3 Have you ever cut back or stopped taking your medicine without telling your doctor because you felt worse when you took it?
4 When you travel or leave home, do you sometimes forget to bring along your medicine?
5 Did you take all your medicines yesterday?
6 When you feel like your symptoms are under control, do you sometimes stop taking your medicines?
7 Do you ever feel hassled about sticking to your treatment plan?
8 How often do you have difficultly remembering to take all your medicine?
A) Never
B) Once in a while
C) Sometimes
D) Usually
E) All the
Cells with no subscript are not included in the test.

B. Marital Status, Living arrangements, Level of education, working status and transport availability
Married patients represented the majority of the cohort group with 66% (n=254), 26.5% (n=102), and 7.5% (n=29) of the patients married in the low, medium and high adherence groups respectively. Seventy-One per cent (n=5) of widowed patients reported high levels of adherence (MMAS-8 =8) compared to 28.6% (n=2) who reported medium or low levels of adherence. This was a statistically significant difference (p< .05 in the two-sided test of equality for column proportions. Cells with no subscript are not included in the test. Tests assume equal variances.1
1. Tests are adjusted for all pairwise comparisons within a row of each innermost sub-table using the Bonferroni