Development of the AIDS Health Belief Scale (AHBS)

Abstract

The AIDS Health Belief Scale (AHBS) was developed to measure the four components of the health belief model (HBM): perceived susceptibility to disease, perceived severity of a specific disease, perceived benefits of preventive behavior, and barriers to preventive behavior. Sixteen items were developed for the original AHBS. Results of the first phase of AHBS development showed that all 16 items correlating significantly (p < .001) with total AHBS scores, collected from 216 undergraduate students. The second phase involved results from 401 completed AHBSs and demonstrated a high degree of internal consistency with alphas ranging from .82 to .93. In addition, factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying structure of the scale. Results demonstrated that four factors (consistent with the four components of the HBM) explained 64% of the variance in response patterns. Implications for future HIV preventive research and education programs are discussed.