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© 1995 Oxford University Press

research-article

Attitudes and Ischaemic Heart Disease in the Caerphilly Study: The Health Attitude Inventory

J E J GALLACHER*, J W G YARNELL*, E S LIMB**, A D BESWICK*, D S SHARP{dagger} and P C ELWOOD*

* MRC Epidemiology Unit, Llandough Hospital Penarth, South Glamorgan CF64 2XW, UK.
** Department of Public Health Sciences, St George's Hospital Medical School Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 ORE, UK.
{dagger} Honolulu Heart Program 347 North Kuakini Street, Honolulu, HI 96817, USA.

Background. The Health Attitude Inventory (HAI) is developed to assess attitudes, beliefs and values towards coronary-related behaviour in epidemiological studies. It comprises a 76-item self-administered questionnaire which can be completed in under 10 minutes by most adults.

Methods. The HAI was administered to 2100 men aged 50–64 years along with measures of ischaemic heart disease risk factors, including the following coronary-related behaviours: smoking, exercise, type A behaviour and the consumption of fried food, dairy produce, wholemeal breed and vegetables.

Results. Cross-sectional analyses using linear regression showed attitudes, beliefs and values to explain between 8% and 27% of the variance in the dietary coronary-related behaviour. For exercise 13% of the variance was explained, and for type A behaviour 18%. Similar analysis for smoking using logistic regression (non-smoker versus current smoker) showed a predictive concordance of 95%.

Conclusions. The HAI has demonstrated the assessment of attitudes, beliefs and values in an epidemiological setting to show associations with a range of coronary risk behaviours. This finding has potential public health as well as aetiological application in that influential attitudes, values and beliefs can be identified to aid increasing healthy as well as reducing risky coronary-related behaviour.

Received 1 June 1994


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