Factor structure, psychometric properties of the Persian version of Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Questionnaire

In psychology and in the field of social cognition, avoidant behaviors can be influenced by the extent to which that people feel vulnerable to infectious diseases. The present study aimed to examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Persian version of Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Questionnaire (P-PVDQ).

This is a cross-sectional-analytic study. 500 students from Tehran University were recruited through convenience sampling from six different faculties and the participants completed Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Questionnaire, Disgust Scale-Revised and Health Anxiety Questionnaire (the two latter ones used for convergent validity). The process of translation and back translation was conducted for PVDQ. After data collection, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, reliability coefficients and convergent validity were conducted by SPSS18 and AMOS20.

Exploratory factor analysis showed two factors: “Perceived Infectability” and “Germ Aversion”. Moreover, this two-factor model has good fit indices in Confirmatory factor analysis including 1.68 for CMIN/DF and 0.05 for RMSEA. This questionnaire showed enough convergent validity and had enough cronebach’s alpha (α=0.83) and test-retest reliability coefficients.

Except item 13 which has loaded on the different factor in the Persian version, compared to the original questionnaire, the Persian version of Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Questionnaire is consistent with the English version and has enough psychometric properties and can be applied in research which needs to evaluate self-reported perceived vulnerability to disease.