Children's Attitudes About Health Care: Initial Development of a Questionnaire

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Abstract
This study is a preliminary report of the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new instrument designed to measure children's attitudes toward health care. The Children's Health Care Attitudes Questionnaire (CHCAQ) taps attitudes toward health care providers, settings, and procedures across the following dimensions: like-dislike, attributed effectiveness-ineffectiveness, and approach-avoidance. The questionnaire incorporates nonverbal as well as verbal respon alternatives, in order to improve its suitability for younger children. Acceptable levels of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct vaiidity (relationships with children's pain ratings) were also demonstrated. Factor-analytic findings suggest that children's attitudes cluster along the three attitudinal dimensions, providing further evidence for the measure's construct validity. Preliminary normative data are presented for which significant age patterns emerged. The potential research utility of the instrument is discussed.