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. 2024 Sep 16:15:1408734.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1408734. eCollection 2024.

The Illusory Health Beliefs Scale: preliminary validation using exploratory factor and Rasch analysis

Andrew Denovan  1 , Neil Dagnall  2 , Kenneth Graham Drinkwater  2 , Álex Escolà-Gascón  3
Affiliations

The Illusory Health Beliefs Scale: preliminary validation using exploratory factor and Rasch analysis

Andrew Denovan et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Illusory health beliefs are ill-founded, erroneous notions about well-being. They are important as they can influence allied attitudes, actions, and behaviors to the detriment of personal and societal welfare. Noting this, and the prevalence of paranormal beliefs in contemporary Western society, researchers developed the Paranormal Health Beliefs Scale (PHBS). Modification of the PHBS for use with a United Kingdom-based sample resulted in the instrument broadening to incorporate illusory rather than merely paranormal health beliefs. The present study psychometrically assessed the emergent Illusory Health Beliefs Scale (IHBS). The principal objective was to validate the IHBS using a large, representative sample. Eight hundred and fifty participants (360 males, 482 females, eight non-binary) completed the IHBS alongside instruments assessing theoretically associated constructs (i.e., magical thinking, faith in scientifically unsubstantiated notions, and forms of self-referential, intuitive causation). Exploratory factor analysis revealed the existence of six meaningful IHBS dimensions: Religious/Spiritual, Superstition, Precognitive, Health Myths, Skepticism, and Health Pseudoscience. The IHBS demonstrated satisfactory reliability and convergent validity with theoretically aligned constructs. Rasch analysis at the subscale level revealed good item/person fit and item/person reliability, unidimensionality, and equivalency of items across subgroups (gender and religious affiliation). Analysis confirmed the IHBS was an effective measure of illusory health beliefs. However, researchers should undertake further work to refine the scale and evaluate its performance across different samples and time points.

Keywords: Illusory Health Beliefs Scale; Rasch analysis; convergent validity; illusory health beliefs; questionnaire scrutiny.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Person-item maps of the IHBS. Participants are on the left of the dashed lines (more able are located at the top of the map). Items are on the right of the dashed lines (more difficult items are located at the top of the map. M = Mean person ability of mean item difficulty; S = one standard deviation; T = two standard deviations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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