Health perception scale (HPS)

This scale was developed by Diamond et al. [31] and its validity and reliability were carried out by Kadıoğlu and Yıldız [32]. There are 15 items and 4 dimensions (control of center, self-awareness, certainty and importance of health) in HPS. It is a five-point Likert type scale. Six items of the scale are positive and 9 items are negative expressions. A minimum of 15 points and a maximum of 75 points can be obtained from the scale. The validity of the scale was evaluated with factor analysis and content-scope validity and reliability were evaluated with item-total score correlation, internal consistency and continuity methods. Kendal W analysis was used for content validity, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used for internal consistency, and Pearson correlation analysis was used for item analysis and test-retest analysis. It was stated that the Turkish version of the scale is a valid and reliable scale. In the study conducted by Kadıoğlu and Yıldız, Cronbach’s alpha values were found to be 0.90 for the control of center dimension, 0.91 for the self-awareness dimension, 0.91 for the certainty dimension and 0.82 for the importance of health dimension. In the present study, these values were found to be 0.80, 0.62, 0.75 and 0.60, respectively. In our study, the Cronbach Alpha value of two dimensions (self-awareness and importance of health) was found to be low. This may be due to our sample being different and our data not being distributed normally. The HLS scale was chosen for this study because it is a scale with proven Turkish validity and reliability in this field.