Skip Navigation


Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on March 24, 2009
Health Education Research 2009 24(5):811-817; doi:10.1093/her/cyp016
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
24/5/811    most recent
cyp016v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by de Nooijer, J.
Right arrow Articles by van Assema, P.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by de Nooijer, J.
Right arrow Articles by van Assema, P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The compensatory health beliefs scale: psychometric properties of a cross-culturally adapted scale for use in The Netherlands

Jascha de Nooijer1,*, Saskia Puijk-Hekman2 and Patricia van Assema1

1 Department of Health Promotion, Nutrition and Toxicology Research Institute Maastricht
2 Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

* Correspondence to: J. de Nooijer. E-mail: j.denooijer{at}gvo.unimaas.nl

This study assesses the psychometric properties of a measuring scale for compensatory health beliefs (CHBs), culturally adapted for use in the Dutch context. CHBs refer to the idea that people can compensate for unhealthy (mostly pleasant) behaviours with healthy behaviours, e.g. ‘It is OK to eat a chocolate bar, because I am going to the gym tonight’. We are critical towards such beliefs as they may also be an excuse to justify unhealthy behaviours. Before such effects can be studied, an appropriate tool to measure CHBs must be developed. We adapted a Canadian scale, consisting of four factors relating to beliefs about substance use, eating/sleeping habits, stress and weight regulation, translating it according to guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation and testing it among 145 Dutch students. Factor analysis showed that the structure was not entirely identical in the Dutch context, and the internal consistency of the four subscales was also low. The overall scale showed a high internal consistency ({alpha} = 0.78), indicating the existence of an underlying construct, and a high Pearson correlation between the first and second measurements (r = 0.82), showing good stability. We recommend using the overall scale and further studying its reliability among other subgroups as well as its validity.

Received on June 18, 2008; accepted on February 23, 2009


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.