Psychometric Property of Afaan-Oromo Version of Hill-Bone High Blood Pressure Therapy compliance Scale among Ethiopian Hypertensive Patients

Background Despite being manageable with affordable cost, around 80% of hypertensive cases remain uncontrolled, due to non-compliance with medication and lifestyle recommendations. Purpose To evaluate the psychometric property of the Afan-Oromo version of the Hill–Bone High Blood Pressure Therapy (HB-HBPT) Compliance Scale and compliance rate among hypertensive patients. Patients and Methods: We conducted a hospital-based cross-sectional study. We translated it from English into Afan-Oromo, then back-translated it into English. We used Cronbach’s alpha test to for reliability, the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test for sample adequacy, Bartlett’s test of sphericity to check variable intercorrelation, and then performed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to assess the validity of the tool. We sought written informed consent from participants. We analyzed the data using SPSS version 20. Results A total of 543 hypertensive patients were included, with a mean (± SD) age of 56.5 ± 12.3 years. The overall Cronbach’s alpha test was 0.82, increasing to 0.89 after deleting item 6. The KMO test was 0.92, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity had a p-value < 0.001. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed that all items were valid, with correlations ranging from 0.38 to 0.79, except for item 6, with correlation of 0.042. It was found that 64.8% (with 14 items) and 62.6% (with 9 sub-items) of patients’ demonstrated good compliance to anti-hypertensive medications. A top reasons for non-compliance were: forgetting (40.7%), followed by short supply of drugs (34.1%) and consuming all/extra pills at once (30.6%). Conclusion The Afan-Oromo version of the 13-item BH-HBPT compliance scale demonstrated good internal consistency, item discrimination, and construct validity. Confirming that item 6 does not fit the scale and negatively impacts the measure. Moreover, the antihypertensive medication compliance was suboptimal, with forgetting and drug unavailability being the leading reasons, highlighting the need for compliance support.