Article Text
Abstract
Background The concept of body awareness has come into sight as a subject of scientific research and it has been suggested to be useful in the management of chronic disease [1]. The Body Awareness Questionnaire (BAQ) is an 18-item scale to measure self-reported attentiveness to normal body processes [2]. It has been identified as an instrument with strong psychometric properties [1]. However, there is no validated Swedish version available.
Objectives To develop and to test the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the BAQ for measuring bodily focused of attention in a population of patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Methods The study employed a cross-sectional design and a psychometric validation study was developed. The study population consisted of a convenience sample of 120 patients with RA. Psychometric testing included concurrent think aloud method (n=10) to investigate usability and to understand how the patients’ perceive and interpret the questions in the BAQ and Cronbachs alpha coefficients was used to test the internal consistency. Confirmatory factor analysis of the data was conducted using the sem package in R to test the factor structure to investigate the construct validity.
Results The majority of the participants’ were able to comprehend (= understanding) all the items in BAQ 1-18, retrieve (=retrieval) all the necessary information from long-term memory, make a judgment (=judgment) about the information needed to answer the items in BAQ, and respond (responding) to the statements in the BAQ item 1-18. Cronbach’s alpha of the overall BAQ 18- item was satisfactory 0.90 in the RA sample. The result of the CFA indicate that the one-factor model have most adequate fit with CFI=0.747 compared to CFI=0.560 for four-factor model.
Conclusions The one-factor model displayed the most acceptable fit of the Swedish version of the BAQ. Although further testing of the BAQ scale with different sample is necessary.
Mehling. W.E., Gopisetty. V, Daubenmier, J., Price. C.J., Hecht. F.M. & Stewart. A. Body Awareness: Construct and Self-Report Measures. PLoS One. 2009; 4: e5614.
Shields S. A., Mallroy M. E., & Simon. A. The body awareness questionnaire: reliability and validity. Journal of Personality Assessment. 1989; 53: 802-815.
Disclosure of Interest None Declared