Psychometric Testing of the Reduced Laffrey Health Conception Scale

Purpose. Laffrey's Health Conception Scale (LHCS), an instrument designed to measure personal definitions of health, was reduced with the intent of creating a useful yet less cumbersome version of the LHCS. Design. 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 subsequently tested with a larger population of manufacturing plant workers. Setting. One chemical plant and three Midwestern manufacturing plants. Subjects. The sample for the preliminary study comprised 94 chemical plant workers. For the larger study, the sample comprised 892 subjects; because this instrument was part of a larger questionnaire to identify predictors of workers' use of hearing protection, only those workers who spent some part of their work time in areas of the plant which required 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 health; all but one item had loaded on one of the two factors with a loading of .41 or greater. The revised LHCS demonstrated excellent internal consistency. Two distinct factors, the clinical subscale and the overall wellness subscale, were isolated. Conclusions. The researchers recommend the reduced LHCS be used for assessing subjects' definition of health; the reduced instrument requires fewer items, and therefore less time, to measure individuals' definitions of health with excellent reliability.