Glossary

  • Perceived Susceptibility - Belief about getting a disease or condition.
  • Perceived Severity - Belief about the seriousness of the condition or leaving it untreated and its consequences.
  • Perceived Benefits - Belief about the potential positive aspects of a health action.
  • Perceived Barriers - Belief about the potential negative aspects of a particular health action.
  • Cues to Action - Factors which trigger action.
  • Self-Efficacy - Belief that one can achieve the behavior required to execute the outcome.
  • Validity - refers to how accurate an instrument is in assessing the latent construct it is intended to measure.
    • Content Validity - Is a type of validity that measures all relevant domains of a particular test. One way to measure this is to have an expert in the field review the instruments systematically, comparing items to the domains they are intended to measure.
    • Construct Validity - Is a type of validity that assesses how well the measure performs or behaves as expected. One type of construct validity is divergent validity in which a researcher correlates the measure of interest with an unrelated construct. If the two do not correlate, divergent validity is confirmed.
    • Criterion Validity - Is a type of validity that refers to how well a measure corresponds with a "gold standard". A researcher can correlate the results of their instrument with an accepted gold standard in the field. A correlation of at least 0.60 is acceptable.
  • Reliability - refers to the consistency of a measure's performance.
    • Internal Consistency - Is a type of reliability that measures consistency across items within a scale. Cronbach's alpha is used to measure internal consistency.