Psychometric Properties of the Iranian version of Champion’s Revised Health Belief Scale for Breast Cancer screening Model

Women’s beliefs regarding breast cancer and its screening approaches were considered antecedents of their behavioral changes. Understanding of these beliefs in women requires a valid and reliable instrument. The present study seeks to translate the English version of the Champion’s Revised Health Belief Model Scale (CRHBMS) into the Persian language and assess its psychometric properties.

The study was conducted on 334 students at Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Iran, 2016. The 57‑item CRHBMS was translated to Persian language, back translated, and tested. To test the face and content validity of the Persian version; item analysis, Content Validity Ratio (CVR), and Content Validity Index (CVI) were applied, respectively. Construct validity of the Persian scale was performed by Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (EFA, CFA) using Kaiser‑Meyer‑Olkin and Bartlett’s tests in SPSS 16 and LISREL8.72 software. The reliability of the translated scale was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and test‑retest approaches.

In the EFA, eight factors were extracted concerning breast cancer screening, and each item was loaded on its specific factor. These factors were self‑efficacy, health motivation, benefits‑mammography, benefits‑Breast Self‑Examination (BSE), barriers‑mammography, barriers‑BSE, susceptibility, and severity. The final 42‑item scale was confirmed by the CFA, and all goodness of fit indices showed a proper fit of the model. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and test‑retest correlation of the subscales ranged from 0.72–0.89 and 0.67–0.93, respectively.

The study suggests that the Persian version of CRHBMS is a feasible scale for evaluating women’s health beliefs regarding breast cancer and its screening behaviors.