Coronary Artery Disease Health Belief Scale:development and testing of reliability and validity

Objective To develop a scale for measuring CHD patients' health belief and to rectify its reliability and validity.Methods The primary items were obtained through reviewing literature and semi-structured interviewing with CHD patients.After team discussion and experts evaluation,the pretesting scale was developed.Two hundred and sixty subjects were recruited in the first study to finish the questionnaire by convenience sampling.The reliability and validity of this scale were tested by exploratory factor analysis,reliability analysis and correlation analysis.Results It was found that eight common factors extracted by exploratory factor analysis.Factor loading of each item ranged between 0.489 and 0.850.The 8 factors explained for 60.698％ of total variance.The correlations between the subscales and the total scale were ranging from 0.811 to 0.876.The correlations between the subscales of the scale were ranging from 0.330 to 0.732.The Cronbach's α coefficients of the total scale was 0.802,and the subscales Cronbach's α coefficients were ranging from 0.684 to 0.834.Test-retest reliability was 0.880,and that of subscales were 0.673～0.841.Conclusions The newly developed coronary artery disease health belief scale has showed acceptable reliability and validity,which can be used as a useful tool for the assessment and intervention of patients' health belief. Key words: Coronary artery disease;  Health belief;  Scale;  Reliability;  Validity