ArticlePatient preference and adherence2026
Empowering Adherence Assessment: Translating and Validating the 15-STARS Questionnaire for Use in Taiwanese Community Pharmacies.
Article in Patient preference and adherence, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Medication adherence is a key determinant of treatment effectiveness, yet few brief, freely available, and culturally appropriate adherence assessment tools are available in Traditional Chinese for use in routine community pharmacy practice. The 15-item Screening Tool for AdheRence to medicineS (15-STARS) is a pharmacy-based questionnaire designed to identify medication non-adherence and its underlying barriers. Objective: To translate, culturally adapt, and validate the 15-STARS in Traditional Chinese and evaluate its utility for screening medication non-adherence and identifying barriers to adherence among patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Taiwanese community pharmacies. Methods: This cross-sectional study comprised two sequential phases: translation and cross-cultural adaptation, followed by field testing. Translation involved forward-backward translation and cognitive debriefing with pharmacists and patients. The Traditional Chinese 15-STARS was administered to adults with T2D recruited from six community pharmacies in Taiwan. Psychometric evaluation included content validity, item-level criterion validity against the Traditional Chinese Adherence to Refills and Medications Scale (ChARMS-T), and internal consistency assessed using McDonald's omega (ω). Associations among adherence, medication-related factors, and glycemic control were examined. Results: Ten pharmacists and ten patients participated in cognitive debriefing, and 215 patients completed field testing. Content validity was excellent, with item-level and scale-level content validity indices of 1.00 after revision. Items 6-9 demonstrated good internal consistency (ω = 0.831), and selected 15-STARS items were significantly correlated with corresponding ChARMS-T measures. Among the participants, 53.0% of participants reported no missed medication doses during the previous two weeks, whereas 47.0% reported missing at least one dose. The most common reasons for non-adherence were forgetfulness (33.0%), concerns about taking too many medications (18.6%), and concerns about side effects (15.3%). Greater regimen complexity and higher dosing frequency were associated with lower adherence and poorer glycemic control. Conclusion: The Traditional Chinese 15-STARS demonstrated satisfactory content validity, evidence of criterion validity for selected items, and internal consistency among conceptually related belief-based items in Taiwanese community pharmacies. The instrument may serve as a practical screening tool for identifying patients at risk of non-adherence and exploring adherence-related barriers, thereby supporting targeted pharmacist-led interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.