This three-item scale measures how serious a person believes a particular illness is and how much catching it would disrupt their daily, family, and social life. Hita et al. (2023) used it in a six-month, six-wave longitudinal study of Canadian online panel members on attitudes and behaviors related to COVID-19. The authors adapted phrases from two of the six items Fall, Izaute, and Chakroun-Baggioni (2018) used to measure the severity of catching the flu.
7-point Likert (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Alphas ranged from .85 to .93 across the six measurement waves (Hita et al. 2023, p. 142); values for individual waves were not given. Convergent and discriminant validity were supported (p. 142), and AVEs ranged from .65 to .86 across the waves (Web Appendix A). Fill each blank with the name of the focal disease (e.g., COVID-19). See also Fear of the Disease (ID 90396) and Perceived Benefits of Social Distancing (ID 90288), from the same article.
Hita, Marie Louise Radanielina, Yany Grégoire, Bruno Lussier, Simon Boissonneault, Christian Vandenberghe, and Sylvain Sénécal (2023), "An Extended Health Belief Model for COVID-19: Understanding the Media-based Processes Leading to Social Distancing and Panic Buying," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51 (1), 132-152.
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