The Health Orientation Scale: A measure of psychological tendencies associated with health

Abstract

Health professionals have recently begun to examine the impact of psychological tendencies on people's physical health. The present investigation sought to facilitate this research endeavour through the development and validation of a self‐report instrument designed to measure multiple health‐related psychological tendencies. Reliability analyses provided evidence of internal consistency for the subscales of the Health Orientation Scale. Other results indicated that both gender and age jointly influenced people's responses to the Health Orientation Scale. A final set of results revealed that the psychological variables measured by the Health Orientation Scale were predictive of women's and men's self‐reported compliance with health‐promoting behaviours. The discussion focuses on the potential uses of the Health Orientation Scale in both research and applied settings.

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