The Validity and reliability analysis of "Parent Health Belief Scale" in Turkey

ABSTRACT THE VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF "PARENT HEALTH BELIEF SCALE " IN TURKEY Dilek Sunmaz The purpose of this study was to assess Turkish equivalant of the reliability and validity of the "Parent Health Belief Scale" that was developed to determine the present health beliefs of mothers playing an important role in child health care decisions. The study was performed on 213 mothers living in various regions of Aydin city each was represented as low, middle and high socioeconomic and cultural status according to settlement of their primary health care centers. Participant mothers were the ones taking the main responsibility of the primary care of their 0-5 years old children. Any mother or a child having mental retardation, chronic disease, physical disability or psychological illness were excluded from the study. Developed by Amen in 1998, the scale contains 20 items and has the subscale internal reliability coefficient value ranging between 0.49 to 0.65. Following the translation to Turkish equivalant, the scale was pre-applied to mothers representing the sample group. Sample group was examined by the same scale twice, for the purpose of test/re-test analysis, approximately in 15-20 days following the previous one. Negative and poor correlations between items confirmed by Item Total Statistics led to cancellation of 3 items so the scale was rearranged composing of 17 items. Internal reliablity coefficient of the translated total scale was found highly reliable (a=0.79), that of subscales were changing between the values of 0.63-0.72 Test/re-test reliability coefficient of total scale was shown to be poor. The validity analysis of the translated scale by structural factor evaluation evolved that translated version had also three-factor structure resembling the original one and similar items were associated by the same factors. As a result, further investigations with different study groups and further analysis of test/re-test reliability of total scale and sub scales were suggested. Key Words: health beliefs, parents, children, validity, reliability