Healthy Living - Adherence to Medical Regimes - Evaluation (2)

Methods - Operationalising Variables Operationalising the variables of adherence is very difficult. Different studies may operationalise adherence in different ways making it difficult to compare studies. E.g. Is someone who just misses one dose non-adherent ? If they just take it at the wrong time of day is that non-adherence? If they take the wrong amount, how much becomes non-adherent? It will surely depend on the disease and on the medication.

Measurement of Adherence As discussed, it is very difficult to measure adherence. You need to know about the strengths and limitations of each method of measuring adherence, e.g. self reports - people may give socially desirable answers, etc. Using biochemical tests to measure adherence supports psychology being a science.

Usefulness Usefulness is a really important evaluating point for this section as obviously there are huge costs -  the actual cost in terms of wasted medication and huge costs in terms of poor health and increased hospital admissions. For example it has been estimated that up to 70% of hospital admissions could be prevented if patients had been more adherent to previous health requests.