Rationale:
Anger, anxiety, depression, social isolation and emotional guardedness have all been shown in research to affect cardiopulmonary patients' risk for future incidence and rehab progress. However, programs generally must instead use several different instruments or neglect one or more factors in their assessment and/or outcomes research. The authors are developing an instrument (Psychosocial Risk Factor Survey-PRFS) to efficiently assess anger/hostility, anxiety, depression, social isolation and emotional guardedness for patients with cardiovascular and pulmonary problems.
Objectives:
This research has been designed to measure the construct validity of the five scales of the Psychosocial Risk Factor Survey (PRFS) with the intent of creating an instrument that can help the staff of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation programs assess and assist patients with their psychosocial risk factors.
Methodology:
There were 188 cardiopulmonary patients from six cardiopulmonary rehabilitation programs who were administered the PRFS and a combination of the five external measures. These measures include the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory 2 (STAXI-2), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), the Beck Depression Inventory 2 (BDI-2), the Life Stressors and Social Resources Inventory-Adult Form (LISRES-A) and the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale. The individual scales of each psychosocial construct were then compared with the external measures and correlations were analyzed.
Results:
The PRFS scales correlated significantly at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) with each of their respective valid construct measures. The PRFS scale correlation coefficients with their respective external measures were: Hostility (r =.68), Anxiety (r =.60), Depression (r =.79), Social Isolation (r =.50-.75) and Emotional Guardedness (r =.40).
Conclusion:
The authors conclude that, based on this round of research, this new tool possesses significant construct validity and is ready for the next round of study. This will include reduction to the most efficient items to be included in the abbreviated revision and comparing this revision for validity with the external measures for each psychosocial construct.