title: Measuring HIV stigma at the family level: psychometric assessment of the Chinese Courtesy Stigma Scales (CCSSs).
abstract: Courtesy stigma is the stigmatization a person perceives or experiences due to their association with a stigmatized individual or group. Most HIV-related stigma scales have been developed for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), but not for their HIV-uninfected family members. To date, few measurement scales have been designed to measure the degree of stigma among both PLWHAs and their HIV-uninfected family members at the family level. We developed a set of courtesy stigma scales and estimated their reliability and validity from 256 PLWHAs and 256 of their HIV-uninfected family members. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed in two independent samples: a development sample (N = 216) and a validation sample (N = 296), respectively. Two factors ("public stigma" and "self-perceived stigma") had high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha coefficient between 0.83-0.90) and good construct validity (standardized factor loading range: 0.37-0.95) in both samples. These findings document that the newly developed brief instrument is a psychometrically sound measure of HIV-related stigma among both PLWHAs and their HIV-uninfected family members.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Hongjie
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of HIV/AIDS Control, Nanning Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nanning, Guangxi, China.
authors.forename: Yongfang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
authors.forename: Yehuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Behavioral Health, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, United States of America.
authors.forename: Levent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dumenci
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D057545:Social Stigma; D013240:Stereotyping; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult