Cervical Cancer Screening Beliefs Questionnaire: Development and Psychometric Assessment With Immigrants in Australia

A body of literature consistently highlights that women from minority cultures have been an underserved group in cervical screening.

We aimed to report the development and psychometric assessment of the Cervical Cancer Screening Beliefs Questionnaire (CCSBQ), a culturally sensitive questionnaire for measuring immigrant women's beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes towards cervical cancer and its screening.

A convenience sample of 871 women, recruited from various ethnic organizations for this study, was split into 2 sets for development and validation of the CCSBQ. Items for the questionnaire were drawn from a literature review and a preliminary study conducted by the team. A panel of professional experts and lay women evaluated face and content validity. Multi-trait analysis and Cronbach's alpha were used to assess its factor structure, convergent-divergent validity, internal consistency and construct validity.

A17-item, 3-subscale version of the CCSBQ was formed. Psychometric examination confirmed its 3-factor structure. All items showed a correlation coefficient ≥0.39 with its subscale score. Cronbach's alpha of the 3 subscales ranged from 0.71 to 0.88. Women, who had ever heard of cervical cancer and cervical screening, and screening participation, including ever attended, attended in the last 5 years as recommended and having intention to attend in the near future, had more proactive attitudes to health check-ups, better knowledge about cervical cancer and its screening, and perceived fewer barriers to cervical screening.

The CCSBQ is culturally appropriate, valid and reliable for measuring immigrant women's attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about cervical cancer and its screening practice.