Vital exhaustion measures and their associations with coronary heart disease risk factors in a sample of spanish-speakers

The main purpose of this research was to study the reliability and conceptual validity of two Spanish language measures of Vital Exhaustion (VE), a short-term risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD). The English version of the Maastricht Questionnaire for Vital Exhaustion was used to make a Spanish language questionnaire (VEQ) and a Spanish language interview (VEI) whose scoring systems were equal to the original version. These instruments were administered to a sample of healthy working men (n = 100) and women (n = 130) in Caracas, Venezuela. Participants also completed questionnaires designed to measure anger-expression and social support and were assessed by means of the Structured Interview to measure Type A Behaviour Pattern (TABP). Information about other CAD-risk factors, such as age, smoking behavior, and health habits, were collected. High reliability coefficients, .85 and .91, were found for the VEI and VEQ, respectively. Principal component analysis provided one-factor solutions ...