PLoS ONE (Jan 2024)

Psychometric properties of a modified health belief model for cervical cancer and visual inspection with acetic acid among healthcare professionals in Ethiopia.

  • Semarya Berhe Lemlem,
  • Rebecca A Gary,
  • Katherine A Yeager,
  • Mitike Molla Sisay,
  • Melinda K Higgins

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295905
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 4
p. e0295905

Abstract

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PurposeEvidence supports that the Health Belief Model (HBM) can explain and predicts certain health behaviors, including participation in cervical cancer (CC) screening. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a modified HBM for CC and visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) in female healthcare professionals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020.MethodsPsychometric properties related to CC and VIA were tested using 42-item modified HBM self-administered questionnaire and a cross-sectional study design with simple random sampling. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's sphericity test indicated that data sampling adequacy for exploratory factor analysis was 0.792 (χ2 = 3189.95, df = 351, p ResultsThe final analysis included 194 women, (mean age 30±4.34). Twelve items with ≤ 0.5 were removed and 30 retained items loaded into 6 factors; (benefits of VIA, perceived seriousness of CC, barrier (fear of negative outcome), self-efficacy, susceptibility to CC, and barriers (health system delivery)) explained 65% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha for the total instrument was 0.8 and reliability for the 6 subscales was 0.76-0.92. Composite reliability and average variance extracted indicated good internal consistency and convergent validity. CFA identified 6 additional items to be removed with high residual covariance. The final 24 items of the modified HBM had an acceptable model fit (goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.861, adjusted GFI = 0.823, comparative fit index = 0.937, root mean square error of approximation = 0.059).ConclusionThe modified HBM for CC and VIA with 24 items had adequate psychometric properties and may be used by Ethiopian healthcare professionals for research or clinical purposes. To support external validity the updated 24 items tool is suggested for application in further study in different populations in Ethiopia.