The Health Behavior Scale Developed for the Taiwanese with Chronic Illness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a Health Behavior Scale (HBS) to investigate health behavior amongst Taiwanese with a chronic illness. Results of a qualitative study and a literature review were used to inform the initial development of the 69-item HBS. Two studies were then undertaken to test the psychometric integrity of the scale. In the first study, data was gathered from 80 Taiwanese with a chronic illness and was subjected to item analysis and convergent validity analysis. The second study involved a convenience sample of 372 chronically ill Taiwanese and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. Instrument analysis in the first study resulted in a 49-item HBS with Cronbach’s alpha of .92, and alpha coefficients .73-.91 for the three subscales respectively. Test-retest correlation of .82 (and .80-.86 for subscales) with a 6-week interval supported stability reliability. Content validity of the HBS was evaluated using a panel of experts and convergent validity was used to support the construct validity of the HBS. In the second study, the results of testing the measurement model of the Health Behavior Scale indicated good reliability and accounted for a large amount of variance. This study shows that the HBS has been employed in Taiwanese with chronic illness with remarkable reliability and validity.