Development of a scale to measure adults' perceptions of health: Preliminary findings

Given the national agenda on chronic disease self-management, the goal of the project described in this brief report was to develop a scale that measured adult perceptions about health but did not focus on a specific condition. The Perception of Health Scale (PHS) is based on earlier work that used the Health Belief Model as a focus. The 15-item PHS was administered to 322 patients in several settings, and the responses were analyzed by the method of principal components. Four factors emerged that were named: Center of Control, Self-Awareness, Certainty, and Importance of Health, each of which showed high internal consistency by Cronbach's α. Overall, the PHS is of sufficient internal consistency to make it a potentially useful tool in research designed to include a measure of personal beliefs about health.