DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASURE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD PULMONARY-DISEASE PREVENTION

This developmental study aimed to produce a measure of attitude toward pulmonary disease prevention that yields reliable data from health professionals and students. Systematic scale development procedures, reliability analyses on three samples of 2,852 medical students, and factor analysis were used to develop and refine the attitude scale. Internal consistency (alpha = .83) and test-retest (r = .57) reliabilities are high. These and other analyses indicate that the scale is unidimensional. The resulting Pulmonary Disease Prevention Survey (PDPS) holds promise in educational and health services research as an outcome measure or as a mediating variable that may correlate with preventive behavior.