Researchers

How Researchers Can Use This Survey Tool

The Primary Care Satisfaction Survey for Women (PCSSW) is the first survey tool designed to measure adult women's satisfaction with their primary care experiences.

The PCSSW contains 3 scales:

• Communication
• Administration and Office Procedures
• Care Coordination and Comprehensiveness

The first 2 scales relate to a specific visit; the third scale relates to health care received in the past 12 months. The scales demonstrate strong psychometric properties (reliability and validity), have structures that are invariant across subgroups of women defined by age and race/ethnicity, and offer greater explanatory power compared to a generic satisfaction measure.

The scales also relate to expectations for health care and to overall ratings of health care quality. The 24-item PCSSW may be self-administered or conducted by telephone and may be used in studies to evaluate or improve the quality of primary care for women.

Benchmarks for the PCSSW from the Centers of Excellence in Women's Health are available from the WHQA.
To see how the PCSSW is different from other patient satisfaction surveys, visit question 1 on our frequently asked questions page.  

The Primary Care Services Utilization Tool (PCSUT) assesses quality of care as:

• Rceipt of age-appropriate clinical preventive services generally recommended for women by such groups as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
• Stisfaction with primary healthcare, using instruments developed for the National Centers of Excellence (CoE) in Women's Health Program

This tool allows researchers to collect data on basic care services for women with benchmark comparisons available from 2 large survey samples. A coding form is available to replicate coding schema used in the Centers of Excellence in Women's Health project.

Preventive Services

Preventive services assessed for all women ages 18 and over include:

• Routine physical exam
• Pap smear
• Physical breast exam
• Blood cholesterol test

For women ages 50 and older, age-appropriate services also included mammogram and colon cancer screening. In the CoE study, women are coded "yes" for the screening services if they had received the service during the past 1, 3, or 5 years depending upon prevailing recommendations.

Preventive Counseling

Topics include:

• Smoking or quitting smoking
• Diet and weight
• Exercise
• Alcohol or drug use
• Calcium intake
• Domestic violence
• Sexually transmitted disease.

For women ages 40 and over, hormone therapy is also included.