Adaptation of the Health Anxiety Inventory for Medical Settings
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development/Adaptation and Validation of the Health Anxiety Inventory (short form) for Medical Settings.
IRAS ID
274094
Contact name
Jessica Colenutt
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bath
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Research Summary
This study is interested in people that worry about their health as this can have an impact on other areas of their life such as working and relationships. There is a questionnaire (The Health Anxiety Inventory - short form) used to identify when people worry about their health more than most people but this questionnaire has been criticised when used in medical clinics. Generally, people with physical health conditions find this questionnaire confusing as it was designed for people who don’t have a serious illness and therefore asks patients if they ’think’ they have a serious illness. Many healthcare professionals do not use the short form of the Health Anxiety Inventory for this reason, making it difficult to identify patients that may need additional psychological support to stop worrying about their health.\n\nThis study aims to develop a more suitable questionnaire for identifying people who worry about their health when they already have a physical health condition such as Multiple Sclerosis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. People with personal experience of having and working with physical health conditions will collaborate with the researcher in developing the more suitable questionnaire. To make sure this questionnaire is clinically useful, a large number of people with and with out physical health conditions will then need to complete it. Healthcare professionals will give out the developed questionnaire at routine NHS appointments to help with this.\n\nIt will take approximately thirty minutes to complete the questionnaires and participants will be asked to complete both old and new health anxiety questionnaires. They will also be asked to rate their experience of completing these questionnaires in the hope that the study produces a more suitable questionnaire for use in medical settings.
Summary of Results
Health anxiety can be described as a fear of sinister illness which persists despite reassurance from medical professionals. Health anxiety is common within medical settings, particularly within the context of symptoms being investigated and within physical health conditions which are highly variable and unpredictable. Some studies have shown that health anxiety is particularly common in populations with multiple sclerosis (MS), myalgic encephephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and chronic pain; these conditions are examples of conditions which are high variable and unpredictable.
Screening questionnaires are a very useful tool to support medical professionals with assessing mental health needs within physical health services, and use of such tools can lead to signposting patients towards psychological support. However, current questionnaires used to assess health anxiety within medical settings are thought to be inappropriate and may cause offense, therefore there is a need for a more appropriate health anxiety questionnaire to be developed.
The first study invited a panel of experts to give feedback on a current health anxiety screening questionnaire, The Health Anxiety Inventory – Short Version (SHAI), and to suggest adaptations which would allow for the questionnaire to be modified for medical settings. Three rounds of collecting feedback and making modifications resulted in an adapted version of the SHAI being produced, the Health Anxiety Inventory for Medical Settings (HAI-M). The majority of experts agreed that the HAI-M was appropriate for use in medical settings.
The second study involved asking people with physical health conditions to complete the HAI-M in order to ensure the questionnaire is consistently good in quality and measuring health anxiety as intended. Individuals with MS, ME/CFS and chronic pain were included in the second study given previous research has suggested health anxiety is common in these groups, Participants were asked to complete an online battery of questionnaires including the SHAI, HAI-M and other measures of anxiety and depression. They were also asked to complete the HAI-M again one week later. Completing a battery of questionnaires allowed for an in depth analysis of whether the questionnaire is consistent with other measures of health anxiety, whether it is able to discriminant health anxiety from other types of anxiety, and whether it measures health anxiety consistently over time.
The findings of study two suggest the HAI-M is consistently good in quality and measures health anxiety as intended. As stated, current health anxiety questionnaires are thought to be inappropriate for use in medical settings and this means health anxiety is often not assessed despite being very common in some physical health conditions. Consequently, many individuals are not accessing psychological support. The HAI-M provides a solution to this problem by providing a questionnaire that can be used in medical settings to assess health anxiety, supporting clinicians and patients to identify when psychological intervention could be beneficial.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/YH/0085
Date of REC Opinion
18 Mar 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion