A new measure of excessive parental worries about children's health: development of the Health Anxiety by Proxy Scale (HAPYS)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Health anxiety by proxy is a newly introduced term to describe parents' experience of excessive and unpleasant worries about their child's health. This article describes the development of a new measure, the Health Anxiety by Proxy Scale (HAPYS), for systematic assessment of health anxiety by proxy. METHOD: The development of the HAPYS was performed over three phases. (1) Patients clinically assessed to have health anxiety by proxy participated in semi-structured interviews to elaborate their experience of worries regarding their child's health and their related behaviours, and to examine the face validity of items in an existing questionnaire: 'Illness Worry Scale - parent version'. (2) Based on the findings from Phase 1 the project group and a panel of experts selected and formulated questionnaire items and scoring formats. (3) The HAPYS was pilot-tested twice using cognitive interviewing with healthy parents and parents with health anxiety by proxy followed by further adjustments. RESULTS: The final version of HAPYS consists of 26 items characteristic of health anxiety by proxy and of an impact section with five items. CONCLUSION: Based on the pilot testing the HAPYS showed good face and content validity. It holds the potential to be a valid questionnaire to help clinicians across health care settings assess parents suffering from health anxiety by proxy.
Date Issued
2021-03-16
Date Acceptance
2021-03-04
Citation
Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 2021, 75 (7), pp.523-531
ISSN
0029-1455
Publisher
Danish Psychiatric Association
Start Page
523
End Page
531
Journal / Book Title
Nordic Journal of Psychiatry
Volume
75
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Nordic Psychiatric Association. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Nordic Journal of Psychiatry on 16 March 2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/08039488.2021.1900389
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33724904
Subjects
Measurement
health anxiety
parents
psychological assessment
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2021-03-16