Study characteristics
The characteristics of the studies included in the research are
tabulated in Table 1. The published articles were of worldwide origins
and were conducted in countries including the United Kingdom, Italy, the
United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Iran,
Egypt, Syria, and India. Most of the studies were cross-sectional
studies (N=16, 80% ) [11-26], followed by cohort studies (N=3,
15%) [27-29], and only one randomised controlled trial [30].
The majority of the studies were single-centred (N=13, 65%) and about
30% of the studies were conducted in multiple settings [12, 17, 24,
25, 27, 30], while the remaining study did not mention the setting
[11]
A variety of medication measures was used across the studies. Most of
the studies (N= 7, 35%) examined the rate of compliance using the
frequency of ICT’s administration [11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23],
followed by studies that evaluated patients’ compliance status using
vial or pill count (N=5, 25%) [13, 27-30]. Several studies (N = 3,
15%) used the Likert Scale [17, 21, 26], while some studies (N = 3,
15%) measured compliance using self-reported questionnaires such as
Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) [22], the Medication
Compliance Questionnaire (MCQ) [24], and standardised questionnaire
(not mentioned in the study) [25]. Meanwhile, a study [20]
reported the compliance with medication possession ratio (MPR), and
another study [15] did not mention the method of compliance
measurement.