PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING OF THE REDUCED LAFFREY HEALTH CONCEPTION SCALE

Purpose. Laffrey's Health Conception Scale (LHCS), an instrument desig ned to measure personal definitions of health, was reduced with the in tent of creating a useful yet less cumbersome version of the LHCS. Des ign. The original form of the LHCS was tested in a preliminary study, and results were used as a basis for the reduction of the instrument. The original clinical and new overall wellness subscales were subseque ntly tested with a larger population of manufacturing plant workers. S etting. One chemical plant and three Midwestern manufacturing plants. Subjects. The sample for the preliminary study comprised 94 chemical p lant workers. For the larger study, the sample comprised 892 subjects; because this instrument was part of a larger questionnaire to identif y predictors of workers' use of hearing protection, only those workers who spent some part of their work time in areas of the plant which re quired hearing protection use were eligible to participate. Measures. The original LHCS was used in the preliminary study. The reduced LHCS was used in the larger study and psychometrically evaluated. Results. The reduced LHCS accounted for 51% of the variance in definition of he alth; all but one item had loaded on one of the two factors with a loa ding of .41 or greater. The revised LHCS demonstrated excellent intern al consistency. Two distinct factors, the clinical subscale and the ov erall wellness subscale, were isolated. Conclusions. The researchers r ecommend the reduced LHCS be used for assessing subjects' definition o f health; the reduced instrument requires fewer items, and therefore l ess time, to measure individuals' definitions of health with excellent reliability.