Development and initial testing of a Health Confidence Score (HCS)

Area of Science:

• Health psychology
• Patient empowerment
• Health services research

Background:

• Patient confidence in managing their own health is crucial for improving outcomes and clinical support.
• Existing tools to measure self-care health confidence are limited.
• A need exists for a short, generic survey instrument for evaluation and quality improvement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a short, generic survey instrument to measure patient self-care health confidence.
• To assess the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Health Confidence Score (HCS).

Main Methods:

• The Health Confidence Score (HCS) was developed using literature review and focus groups.
• Two surveys were conducted: study 1 (n=1031) for initial assessment and study 2 (n=378) for validation.
• Construct and concurrent validity were tested by correlating HCS scores with the My Health Confidence (MHC) scale, health status, and demographics.

Main Results:

• The HCS is a brief (50 words) survey with good readability (reading age 8).
• It demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.82) and construct validity, correlating highly with MHC (Spearman r = 0.76).
• The HCS score was associated with health status and negatively with medication count and age, indicating good concurrent validity.

Conclusions:

• The Health Confidence Score (HCS) is a short, user-friendly instrument with robust psychometric properties and construct validity.
• It effectively measures patient self-care health confidence, providing both individual item insights and a comprehensive summary score.
• The HCS is suitable for use in evaluation and quality improvement initiatives to enhance patient outcomes and clinical support.