Description

The Illness Attitudes Questionnaire (IAQ) is a psychological assessment tool designed to measure individuals’ attitudes and concerns regarding illness, pain, and healthcare. Initially developed by Kellner to evaluate hypochondriacal and hysterical behaviors, the tool has since been expanded to encompass a broader range of related attitudes and behaviors.

The IAQ includes items that explore various aspects of an individual’s perspective on health, including concerns about serious illnesses, pain, treatment, and death. It also assesses behaviors related to seeking medical care and either accepting or avoiding medical examinations.

Analysis

The analysis of IAQ results involves examining the scores derived from participants’ responses. The tool typically uses rating scales to record an individual’s attitudes and health-related concerns.
Hypochondriasis refers to the level of concern about one’s health and fears of serious illness.
Medical Information Seeking evaluates the individual’s tendency to seek health-related information.
Avoidance of Medical Care captures the tendency to avoid medical treatment due to fear or anxiety.
The overall score reflects the general attitude toward health, while subscale scores offer insights into specific areas of concern or behavioral tendencies.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the IAQ is to assess health-related attitudes and concerns and to identify hypochondriacal tendencies and behaviors in both clinical and non-clinical populations. It also serves to guide therapeutic interventions by providing data that can inform the development of strategies to manage health-related anxieties and behaviors.

Scoring

Scoring of the IAQ involves calculating the total score based on the sum of the responses across various subscales. Subscale scores are analyzed to identify particular areas of concern or dysfunction. These scores can then be compared against normative data or guidelines to evaluate the individual’s level of concern or behavioral response to illness.

Bibliography

Kellner, R. (1986). The Illness Attitudes Questionnaire: A scale to measure illness behavior. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 30(1), 81–90.
Kellner, R., & Sheffield, P. (1982). Reliability and validity of the Illness Attitudes Questionnaire. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38(4), 724–729.
Hiller, W., & Fichter, M. M. (1991). The Illness Attitudes Questionnaire: Validity and psychometric properties. Psychological Medicine, 21(3), 659–665.