A Psychometric Evaluation of the Dutch Short Health Anxiety Inventory in the General Population

Distress or anxiety about health is known as health anxiety. One of the most widely used scales to measure health anxiety is the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI; Salkovskis, Rimes, Warwick, & Clark, 2002). The current study contributes to both the applicability and understanding of the SHAI by making 5 interrelated methodological contributions: (a) developing a Dutch translation of the SHAI, (b) validating this translation in the Dutch general population, (c) comprehensively examining its factor structure, (d) examining predictive validity and test-retest reliability of test scores, and (e) testing measurement invariance across subsamples and over time and comparing SHAI scores in subsamples of healthy and ill individuals and males and females. Data were collected from 5,310 respondents in 2 consecutive waves with a 2-month time gap. The results revealed that the SHAI comprises 2 factors: Illness Likelihood (14 Items) and Negative Consequences of Illness (4 Items). Further empirical evidence for the measurement invariance of this factor structure across subsamples and over time was revealed, as well as predictive validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of test scores, thereby proving that it is a useful tool for measuring health anxiety in the general Dutch population. On the basis of our results, we recommend that the 14-item SHAI, that is, the Illness Likelihood subscale, be adopted to measure health anxiety in future studies. We suggest slight adaptations to some answer options and argue that the benefit of adding the Negative Consequences of Illness subscale is debatable.