Development and Psychometric Exploration of the Anesthesia Surrendering Instrument (ASI)

Purpose
The aim of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure surrendering at the time of anesthesia induction and to explore the construct validity.
Design
An instrumental cross-sectional design was used and construct validity was evaluated via psychometric testing.
Methods
The anesthesia surrendering instrument (ASI) comprised 36 items. A total of 202 adults (older than 18 years) answered the questionnaire. Principal component analysis was used for item reduction and identification of defining constructs.
Findings
Surrendering to anesthesia was defined by four constructs: preparation by avoidance, control, preparation by understanding, and acceptance, explaining 43.2% of the variance in the matrix.
Conclusions
The findings show that it is possible to measure the concept of surrendering by means of four dimensions as preparation by avoidance, control, preparation by understanding, and acceptance, although the dimensional variance of 43% could be considered weak. The ASI will constitute context-specific patient-reported experience measures for anesthesia, whereas further item refinement and testing of the ASI are necessary to achieve a better variance.