Kręte ścieżki pomiaru zdrowia - prace nad konstrukcją kwestionariusza do oceny zdrowia

Abstract

The article centres around the problem of a subjective measurement of the sense of health. The authors present the stages of the construction of a self‑ descriptive health evaluation tool, taking into account its positive aspects. The work on the very tool was composed of three stages. Stage one, with the use of a questionnaire based on a socio‑ ecological health model collected the opinions of the subjects (166 in total), concerning the understanding of the notion of health and formed the categories people use when evaluating their own health. The study was qualitative in nature. The second stage constituted a construction of an initial version of the tool — a Health Perception Questionnaire (HPQ). Treating the categories of health gathered in the first stage as a starting point, test items were prepared and semantically analysed, and, subsequently, a factor analysis (499 in total) was conducted. As a result, 5 scales of the tool were created: optimism and energy, mental condition, vitality, sensitivity to others and daily duties. Stage three was devoted to the validation and reconstruction of the questionnaire scales. In the beginning, the factor analysis was remade on the basis of the results collected from different unrelated empirical studies with the use of HPQ (612 altogether). In consequence, a decrease of number of items, an increase of a percentage of explained variance (for each factor), lowering an inter‑ correlation between subscales and change of the scale name were introduced. The scale that was formed included positive thinking, mental discomfort, physical activity, sensitivity to others and efficiency of action. The last step was to analyse the relations described in questionnaire categories of health with other constructs from the field of the psychology of health (among others the sense of coherence, coping with stress). The correlations between the tool scales and selected variables that are often used in health context, seem to initially confirm the theoretical validity of HPQ, however, the work on the tool has not been finished yet.