IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v42y1996i11p1561-1567.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The measurement of beliefs about physical symptoms in English general practice patients

Author

Listed:
  • Salmon, Peter
  • Woloshynowych, Maria
  • Valor, Roland

Abstract

A way of measuring patients' beliefs about the origin of their symptoms would allow the investigation of important questions concerning the consultation process and its outcome. The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument that could measure the beliefs about symptoms of patients attending their general practitioner and to demonstrate its utility by comparing beliefs about three types of symptom (respiratory, musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal). Interviews of 150 patients generated items for the belief questionnaire which was then completed by a second sample of 406 general practice patients. Principal components analysis of the responses identified eight readily interpretable belief dimensions: stress; lifestyle; wearing out; environment; internal-structural; internal-functional; weak constitution; concern. Scales were constructed to measure each dimension and the symptom groups were compared. Gastrointestinal symptoms were the most likely to be attributed to internal malfunction and to lifestyle or weak constitution. Musculoskeletal symptoms were more likely to be attributed to structural problems caused by the body wearing out and respiratory symptoms, in contrast, to the influence of the environment. Contrary to prediction, attribution to stress was made equally for the different types of symptom. We have devised a questionnaire, valid specifically for general practice patients, which permits the quantification of beliefs in this setting. The questionnaire could be used in future to track how beliefs respond to medical intervention and how, in turn, beliefs influence illness behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Salmon, Peter & Woloshynowych, Maria & Valor, Roland, 1996. "The measurement of beliefs about physical symptoms in English general practice patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 42(11), pages 1561-1567, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:42:y:1996:i:11:p:1561-1567
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(95)00263-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Neena Kohli & Ajit K. Dalal, 1998. "Culture as a Factor in Causal Understanding of Illness : A Study of Cancer Patients," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 10(2), pages 115-129, September.
    2. Magliano, Lorenza & Fiorillo, Andrea & Malangone, Claudio & De Rosa, Corrado & Maj, Mario, 2006. "Social network in long-term diseases: A comparative study in relatives of persons with schizophrenia and physical illnesses versus a sample from the general population," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 1392-1402, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:42:y:1996:i:11:p:1561-1567. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.