چکیده (انگلیسی):

Background:Technology-based aids for lifestyle change are becoming more prevalent for chronic conditions.
Important “digital divides” remain, as well as concerns about privacy, data security, and lack of motivation.
Researchers need a way to characterize participants’ readiness to use health technologies. To address this need, we
created an instrument to measure patient readiness to engage with health technologies among adult patients with
chronic conditions.
Methods:Initial focus groups to determine domains, followed by item development and refinement, and
exploratory factor analysis to determine final items and factor structure. The development sample included 200
patients with chronic conditions from 6 family medicine clinics. From 98 potential items, 53 best candidate items
were examined using exploratory factor analysis. Pearson’s Correlation for Test/Retest reliability at 3 months.
Results:The final instrument had 28 items that sorted into 8 factors with associated Cronbach’s alpha: 1) Health
Information Need (0.84), 2) Computer/Internet Experience (0.87), 3) Computer Anxiety (0.82), 4) Preferred Mode of
Interaction (0.73), 5) Relationship with Doctor (0.65), 6) Cell Phone Expertise (0.75), 7) Internet Privacy (0.71), and 8)
No News is Good News (0.57). Test-retest reliability for the 8 subscales ranged from (0.60 to 0.85).
Conclusion:The Patient Readiness to Engage in Health Internet Technology (PRE-HIT) instrument has good
psychometric properties and will be an aid to researchers investigating technology-based health interventions.
Future work will examine predictive validity.