ASSESSING CONSTRUCT VALIDITY AND RE-ASSESSING THE RELIABILITY OF THE HEALTH CONCERN QUESTIONNAIRE

Abstract

The Health Concern Questionnaire was developed almost 20 years ago. It has been use by both personal health classroom instructors and researchers. Over time some of the terminology for certain items had changed. A more serious limitation of its usefulness was that construct validity was not initially determined. This meant that a total mean health concern score was unable to be calculated. Thus the PURPOSE of the study was to update the terminology, determine construct validity and to re-validate the internal consistency of the instrument.

METHODS: The first step in this procedure was to have a panel of individuals who had taught personal health classes suggested changes in terminology. Next factor analysis to determine underlying themes was accomplished. Using a eigenvalue of 1, nine factors resulted. Factor 1 contained 27 of the items with 31% of the variance. Since there were no underlying theme for any of the factors, a two factor solution using an eigenvalue of 2 was accomplished. The RESULTS indicated factor 1 contained 33% of the variance and included 31 items. The remaining items in factor 2 contributed 7% of the variance. The correlation between the two factors was highly positive (r=.6). This enabled the collapse of the 50 items into one factor and the feasibility of computing a total mean health concern score.

Cronbach's alpha (r= .96), Spearman-Brown's split half technique(r= .92) and Guttman's split half technique(r = .92) all revealed positive reliability coefficients. The item reliability of each of the 50 items correlated with the total mean score.

In SUMMARY current terminology for the Health Concern Questionnaire has been added. A total mean health concern score can ascertained and the instrument shows high internal consistency homogeneity.