DEVELOPMENT OF THE AIDS HEALTH BELIEF SCALE (AHBS)

The AIDS Health Belief Scale (AHBS) was developed to measure the four components of the health belief model (HBM): perceived susceptibility to disease, perceived severity of a specific disease, perceived benefi ts of preventive behavior, and barriers to preventive behavior. Sixtee n items were developed for the original AHBS. Results of the first pha se of AHBS development showed that all 16 items correlating significan tly (p < .001) with total AHBS scores, collected from 216 undergraduat e students. The second phase involved results from 401 completed AHBSs and demonstrated a high degree of internal consistency with alphas ra nging from .82 to .93. In addition, factor analysis was conducted to d etermine the underlying structure of the scale. Results demonstrated t hat four factors (consistent with the four components of the HEM) expl ained 64% of the variance in response patterns. Implications for futur e HIV preventive research and education programs are discussed.