Self-reported adherence to statins
The MARS-5 consists of five items, mainly addressing intentional
non-adherence behaviour (4 out of 5 items). The items are rated on a
five-point Likert scale (from 1 (always) to 5 (never)), resulting in a
summated score of 5-25 30. No standard cut-off point
to define adherent versus nonadherent medication has been provided by
the scale developers and it varies across studies 31.
In this study the MARS-5 cut-off scores of ≥ 23 and ≥ 24 to identify
adherent and non-adherent patients are both reported, as these are
cut-off points that are more often used and because adherence
distributions found with the MARS-5 are often highly skewed32-35.