Measuring Cognitive and Affective Constructs in the Context of an Acute Health Event

The latest recommendations for building dynamic health behavior theories emphasize that cognitions, emotions, and behaviors – and the nature of their inter-relationships – can change over time. This paper describes the development and psychometric validation of four scales created to measure smoking-related causal attributions, perceived illness severity, event-related emotions, and intention to quit smoking among patients experiencing acute cardiac symptoms. After completing qualitative work with a sample of 50 cardiac patients, we administered the scales to 300 patients presenting to the emergency department for cardiac-related symptoms. Factor analyses, alpha coefficients, ANOVAs, and Pearson correlation coefficients were used to establish the scales' reliability and validity. Factor analyses revealed a stable factor structures for each of the four constructs. The scales were internally consistent, with the majority having an alpha of >0.80 (range: 0.57–0.89). Mean differences in ratings of the perceiv...