Description

The Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ) is a psychometric assessment tool used to measure individuals’ behaviors and attitudes toward illness and healthcare. It was developed by Wessely, Nimnuan, and Sharpe in 1997 and is designed to evaluate various aspects of illness-related behavior, including factors that influence symptom reporting and the seeking of medical help.

Analysis

The IBQ includes questions that address several domains of illness behavior, such as:

Empathy and Symptom Perception: Assesses how sensitive an individual is to symptoms and how they perceive their physical state.
Reporting Behavior: Evaluates the tendency of the individual to report or seek medical help for symptoms.
Impact on Daily Life: Measures how illness-related behaviors affect daily life, social relationships, and functionality.
The analysis involves scoring each domain and evaluating illness behavior based on the individual’s responses.

Purpose

The purpose of the IBQ is to:

Assess Illness Behaviors: Identify and evaluate behaviors related to illness perception and symptom reporting.
Understand Influencing Factors: Explore the psychological and behavioral factors that influence symptom reporting and help-seeking behavior.
Guide Therapeutic Interventions: Provide data that can inform the development of intervention strategies and the management of illness behaviors.

Scoring

Scoring of the IBQ involves:

Total Score: Calculated by summing the scores across all scales of the questionnaire.
Behavior Categories: Analyzing scores within individual categories to identify specific types of behavior or attitudes.

Bibliography

Wessely, S., Nimnuan, C., & Sharpe, M. (1997). Functional somatic syndromes: One or many? The Lancet, 350(9078), 136–139.
Giel, R., Giel, J., & Holt, H. (1989). The Illness Behaviour Questionnaire and its use in evaluating illness behaviour. Psychological Medicine, 19(2), 425–430.
Rief, W., & Broadbent, E. (2007). Explaining medically unexplained symptoms – models and mechanisms. Psychological Bulletin, 133(5), 999–1020.