THE HEALTH ASSESSMENT OF OLDER WOMEN INTERVIEW GUIDE HEALTH SCORING COMPONENT: A PSYCHOMETRIC EVALUATION.
Contributors: University Of Illinois At Chicago, Health Sciences Center.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The Health Assessment of Older Women Interview Guide was developed in order to provide an index which would assist nurses and older women to jointly identify health needs and arrive at interventions designed to promote optimal health practices on the part of older women. This study examined the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Health Scoring Component of this instrument.

The data base for this study consisted of the computerized responses of a convenience sample of 202 women who had completed the Health Assessment of Older Women Interview Guide with the assistance of trained interviewers. These women were between the ages of 55 and 91, lived in non-institutionalized settings, and described themselves as healthy. Women from urban and semi-rural communities in Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Florida participated in the interviewing process.

Findings supported the internal consistency reliability of the items entering into the original Health Scoring Component of the instrument but did not support the internal consistency of the subscales as devised by the instrument's originators. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine if factors which would better depict the categories of self-described health would emerge. A four factor solution using the maximum-likelihood extraction method and varimax rotation was found to best represent the data. The four factor solution explained 53% of the variance while indicating that there were four dimensions underlying the self-description of health. Reliability estimates for the 18 items entering into the four factor model were computed, with an overall scale internal consistency reliability of.86. Internal consistency reliability of the four subscales ranged from.70 to.96, indicating that the four subscales also demonstrated adequate reliability. This study thus provides the data necessary for further use and refinement of the Health Assessment of Older Women Interview Guide.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-10, Section: B, page: 4457.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER, 1989.

School code: 0806.