HEALTH SALIENCE - RECLAIMING A CONCEPT FROM THE LOST AND FOUND

This paper describes development of a new measure to assess one dimens ion of health motivation, the salience of health concerns. The new, fi ve-item, measure was administered to 578 women as part of a larger inv estigation examining the determinants of exercise and calcium consumpt ion. The study used a cross-sectional survey research design. Data wer e analyzed separately for premenopausal and menopausal women, allowing us to cross-validate our findings in two independent samples, Our fin dings suggest that the new measure has many desirable psychometric pro perties. It is internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 and 0.86 for premenopausal and menopausal women, respectively). For both sampl es, factor analysis revealed that over 60% of the total item variance was explained by a single underlying factor. All factor loadings excee ded 0.74, The measure also correlated in predictable ways with measure s of other health beliefs, differentiated among women in different sta ges of change with respect to exercise and calcium consumption, and di scriminated between women on the basis of their information-seeking be havior. We discuss the potential applications of this new measure in f uture research. Hopefully, the measure will facilitate research on the role that health salience plays in the behavior change process.