Background: Patient education is a mandatory activity for Norwegian hospitals, but its effects have not been possible to assess properly due to lack of suitable instruments in Norwegian. This article describes the work undertaken to find a suitable questionnaire, translate it to Norwegian and validate it.
Material and methods: The heads of centres for patient education in the hospitals in Central Norway were presented with 15 different questionnaires measuring various areas - for example quality of life and coping. They were then asked to pick out the/those instruments which in their opinion best captured the aim of patient education. The unanimously chosen questionnaire was translated from English to Norwegian and back and was then validated in two samples of patients.
Results: The American "Patient Activation Measure (PAM)" was chosen because it focused on the patients' own efforts, was viewed as respectful and patient-oriented and emphasised self- management skills, knowledge and ability to choose. The correlation between PAM score and a question about ability to take care of own health was good (r = 0.477, p = 0.018) and the test-retest showed good reliability.
Interpretation: The Norwegian version of PAM is suitable as a measure of knowledge, skills, and ability to cope with own health and use of health services. The questionnaire is suitable for evaluation of interventions aimed at activating patients' ability to take care of their own health.