Construction and validation of a questionnaire to measure the health beliefs of general practice patients.

The health belief model has been widely used as a conceptual framework for understanding and explaining compliance behaviour. A weakness characterizing work in the area has been lack of standardization of measurement of the components of the health belief model. This paper describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to measure these components. The questionnaire was designed for use with general practice patients who have a wide range of different illnesses, therefore the nature of the patients' illness is not mentioned in the content of the items. Principal components analysis was used to determine the dimensions underlying patients' beliefs. Principal components analysis and application of Cronbach's alpha statistic identified four reliable sub-scales of the questionnaire. The sub-scales measured patient's beliefs about: the threat caused by illness, the efficacy of traditional medical care, the way illness is dealt with and the barriers to taking medications.