title: Unreliable item or inconsistent person? A study of variation in health beliefs and belief-anchors to biomedical models.
abstract: The reliability of an item designed to measure health belief is often confounded with response consistency at the person level. The study applied contemporary measurement methods to an inventory of common sense beliefs about diabetes and used a sample of N = 563 adults with diabetes to test the hypothesis that individuals whose beliefs are congruent with a biomedical model are more consistent in their responses. Item-level analysis revealed that the domains of Causes and Medical Management were the least reliable. Person-level analysis showed that respondents who held views congruent with the biomedical model were more consistent than people who did not.
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA eip@wakehealth.edu.
authors.forename: Edward H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Ip
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saldana
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Shyh-Huei
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Julienne K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Kirk
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Ronny A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Ha
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Oklahoma State University, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Grzywacz
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA Oklahoma State University, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Arcury
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Sara A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Quandt
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D035843:Biomedical Research; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008511:Medicine; D008875:Middle Aged
keywords: beliefs; chronic illness; concordance; health psychology; older person; quantitative methods; reliability