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This paper describes development of a new measure to assess one dimension of health motivation, the salience of health concerns. The new, five-item, measure was administered to 578 women as part of a larger investigation examining the determinants of exercise and calcium consumption. The study used a cross-sectional survey research design. Data were analyzed separately for premenopausal and menopausal women, allowing us to cross-validate our findings in two independent samples. Our findings suggest that the new measure has many desirable psychometric properties. It is internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 and 0.86 for premenopausal and menopausal women, respectively). For both samples, factor analysis revealed that over 60% of the total item variance was explained by a single underlying factor. All factor loadings exceeded 0.74. The measure also correlated in predictable ways with measures of other health beliefs, differentiated among women in different stages of change with respect to exercise and calcium consumption, and discriminated between women on the basis of their information-seeking behavior. We discuss the potential applications of this new measure in future research. Hopefully, the measure will facilitate research on the role that health salience plays in the behavior change process.

Social support has been found to predict success with health behavior change but, as yet, few studies examine the relationship between social support and dietary change in a low-income population. We developed a social support for dietary change measure for a low-income, hypercholesterolemic population and tested its predictive utility in a clinical trial with a dietary intervention. Questions were administered by telephone to 443 patients enrolled in the trial. Dietary change was measured by the Dietary Risk Assessment Factor analysis revealed three social support factors: friend, family and negative support, and a fourth factor, motivation to change. Multiple regression analysis revealed that motivation to change was predictive of change to a less atherogenic diet Results of a gender-stratified analysis revealed that friend support was a significant predictor of dietary change for women but not for men. Interaction