Development and validation of the Satisfaction With Appearance Scale: Assessing body image among burn-injured patients.

Abstract

The Satisfaction With Appearance Scale (SWAP) is a 14-item questionnaire, assessing both the subjective appraisal and social-behavioral components of body image among burn survivors. Burn survivors requiring hospitalization (n = 165) completed a packet of psychometric instruments, including the SWAP at 1-week postdischarge. The SWAP demonstrated a high level of intemal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, r a = .87; the mean interitem correlation, r ii = .32, the mean item-total correlation, r ii = .53). Eighty-four participants were retested approximately 2 months after the initial assessment to evaluate test-retest reliability (r ii , = .59). A principal-components analysis with a varimax rotation yielded 4 easily interpretable factors accounting for 66% of the total variance. The correlations of the SWAP total score with other selected psychometric measures provided evidence for both convergent and discriminant validity. This initial evaluation of the SWAP suggests that it is both a reliable and valid measure of body image for a burn-injured population.