Lay perceptions of serious illnesses: An adapted version of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) for healthy people

The present study was undertaken to develop a version of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) for healthy individuals. The perceptions of AIDS, tuberculosis and skin cancer were assessed in a national sample of 1113 healthy individuals, recruited at random from different working environments. Item selection was determined by principal components analyses, which verified the factorial structure of the questionnaire. Earlier, a pilot study provided some evidence of the good internal reliability of the subscales and the retest reliability at 3 weeks. The results indicate that the factorial structure of the IPQ-R for healthy individuals (IPQ-RH) is similar to the structure for different patient groups, with an internal reliability for each illness dimension ranging from 0.64 to 0.81. The IPQ-RH dimensions account for significant variance in attitudes and intentions towards the adoption of preventive behaviours. The results lend further support for the theoretically derived dimensions of illness representations, and could be used to provide the basis for new research and interventions in health promotion.