British Journal of Health Psychology · 1996 · 106 citations · 0 references
Public HealthBehavioral SciencesPsychologyBehavior Change TheoryPsychometricsScale DevelopmentBehavior Change StrategiesChange ReadinessPsychological TestingReadiness AssessmentStages Of ChangeChange Readiness MeasurementHierarchical Factor ModelsPredictive ValidityPsychological Readiness For ChangeReadiness Assessment ScalesReadiness For Change AssessmentReadiness To Change AssessmentTranstheoretical Model Of Change
The structure of the Readiness to Change Questionnaire (RCQ) is examined on a sample of 174 male heavy drinkers. It is shown that the RCQ items assessing the precontemplation, contemplation and action stages of Prochaska & DiClemente's model lack discriminant validity and that these three stages are not related in a simplex structure. A hierarchical factor model is fitted to the present data, producing a global second‐order factor termed ‘readiness to change’. It is shown that the RCQ items can be rescored to form a continuous measure of ‘readiness to change’ and evidence of the reliability and predictive validity of this scale is presented. The theoretical implications of these results are considered.