The Health-Related Hardiness Scale: development and psychometric analysis

This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of the Health-Related Hardiness Scale (HRHS). The HRHS was developed to measure the effects of hardiness in individuals with actual health problems. Items were generated that measured the presence, rather than absence, of the hardiness dimensions based on theoretical definitions of health-related control, commitment, and challenge. Two factors were isolated using principal components analysis (n = 389). These two factors, Challenge/Commitment and Control, accounted for 32.1% of variance. Factor loadings were strong, ranging from .41 to .68. Parsimony of the HRHS was achieved by reducing the original 51-item scale to 34 items. Alpha reliability coefficients were .91 for the total scale and .87 for each subscale. Test-retest, reliability coefficients ranged from .74 to .78. The final scale retained only two of the originally conceptualized three dimensions of the health-related hardiness construct.