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Patient Activation Measure

PAM-13
health sciencespsychologyLicensed — permission required

A 13-item measure of patient knowledge, skill, and confidence for self-management of chronic conditions and general health. Items vary in difficulty and are scored using a Rasch-calibrated algorithm that converts raw responses to a 0–100 activation score, classified into four activation levels.

Items
13
Response format
4-point Likert scale + N/A
Version
1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Patient activation was measured using the 13-item Patient Activation Measure (PAM-13; Hibbard, Mahoney, Stockard, & Tusler, 2005) under licence from Insignia Health/Phreesia. Raw responses were converted to a 0–100 activation score using the licensed Rasch-calibrated algorithm, and participants were classified into one of four activation levels.

Reliability & validation

notes
Rasch person-reliability typically exceeds .85.
Validation population
National sample of US adults with chronic conditions (Hibbard et al., 2005)
Cronbach's α
0.87

Known limitations

LICENSED — obtain research licence from Phreesia before administration. Do NOT publish a raw-sum score as a "PAM score" — the 0–100 metric requires the proprietary conversion table. Item wording here is from published academic reproductions; the licensed scoring kit is authoritative and may differ in minor wording. The PAM is unidimensional by design; subscales are not interpretable.

Original citation

Hibbard, J. H., Mahoney, E. R., Stockard, J., Tusler, M. (2005). Development and testing of a short form of the patient activation measure. Health Services Research, 40(6 Pt 1), 1918-1930.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2005.00438.x

This instrument is licensed. Obtain permission from the copyright holder before using it in your study.

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Library entry verified January 2024. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.