Developing and Validating a Scale to Measure Cognitive Behavior and Smoking Cessation Assistance Behavior among Village Health Volunteers in Thailand

Abstract

This research is basically a descriptive study aimed at developing and validating a scale that would measure cognitive behavior and smoking cessation assistance behavior among cigarette-smoking Village Health Volunteers (VHV) in Thailand. This study was conducted by distributing an 8-item Cognitive Cigarette Scale (CCS) and a 10-item Smoking Cessation Assistance Behavior Scale (SCABS) to 400 cigarette-smoking Thai VHV who are residing in the various regions of the country.

After subjecting the data to statistical analysis, findings reveal that the instruments’ content validity indexes are at 0.98 and 0.93 respectively. This means that in terms of content, both instruments are highly valid. Data further reveals that the value of Cronbach’s Alpha for the two instruments are at 0.81 and 0.84 respectively. This means that both instruments are highly reliable.

In terms of construct validity, factor analysis shows the following: an Eigen value that is greater than 1.0; a total variance of 37.79%; 9.020; p 0.701; CFI = 1.00; and SRMR 0.005. Furthermore, factor analysis reveals that the cognitive skills of the VHV and the smoking cessation assistance behavior, both, influence each other (β 0.54 and p 0.05). All these mean that the scales developed by the researcher to measure cognitive behavior and Smoking Cessation Assistance Behavior are valid and reliable to collect data among Thai VHVs.