Background: The attributional style of clinical workers will affect their emotion and behavior and affect how they deal with the relationship with patients. Current tools lack clinical events and are not suitable for measuring the attributional style of doctor. In this study, the development of the Doctor’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (DASQ) is presented.
Methods: In study 1, based on the previous literature and the open-ended questionnaire, the theoretical structure of DASQ was constructed. In study 2, items analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were conducted in the sample (n=559) to select the best items for the DASQ. In study 3, the internal structure of the DASQ was tested in the sample (n=740) via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and 218 doctors were retested four weeks later.
Results: There are 24 items in the scale, including positive events questionnaire and negative events questionnaire, all of which are composed of four dimensions: controllability, globality, stability, and internality. The fitting degree of each questionnaire model is good, and all indexes are above 0.9. The internal consistency coefficient and retest coefficient of both the positive events questionnaire and the negative events questionnaire were above 0.75.
Conclusion: The DASQ meets the requirements of measurement and can be used to measure the attributional style of doctors.
Keywords: doctor, the attribution style, scale development