Psychometric properties of the Chinese Breast Cancer Screening Beliefs questionnaire.

BACKGROUND

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. The Chinese Breast Cancer Screening Beliefs (CBCSB) questionnaire was developed to measure Chinese-Australian women's beliefs, knowledge and attitudes about breast cancer and breast cancer screening.

PURPOSE: To assess the psychometrics of the modified version CBCSB in a Chinese-speaking community.

METHODS

Two items in the original CBCSB were removed because they were not applicable to the Hong Kong setting, which resulted in an 11-item CBCSB. A total of 730 women aged at least 18 years old without a history of breast cancer self-completed the questionnaire.

RESULTS

Based on 730 Chinese-speaking women with mean age of 43 years, the three hypothesized subscales of the CBCSB had Cronbach's alpha ranging between 0.69 and 0.75. Non-responses to the items were at most only 3.3%. The corrected item-total correlations for the hypothesized subscales ranged from 0.35 to 0.63 and were higher than those for the competing subscales. As hypothesized, the frequency of health practices was significantly associated with all subscales of the CBCSB. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an adequate fit for the hypothesized three-factor structure of the modified CBCSB questionnaire.

CONCLUSIONS

The 11-item CBCSB questionnaire was culturally appropriate, reliable and valid in a Chinese-speaking community setting. It can be used to gain understanding of Chinese-speaking women's beliefs, knowledge and attitudes about breast cancer and breast cancer screening. It may also serve as an outcome for the development and assessment of public education programs for breast cancer screening.