Approbation of the Russian version of the "Short Health Anxiety Inventory" on a sample of school-age children

The article presents the results of the Russian-language version of the "Short Health Anxiety Inventory" (SHAI) approbation on a sample of conditionally healthy school-age children. Russian health psychology needs to expand the tools for the study of health anxiety in childhood nowadays. This fact determines the need to develop original and adapt methods created abroad, which are aimed at assessing its presence/absence, as well as severity. The sample consisted of 269 respondents - conditionally healthy children and adolescents aged 9 to 17 years (average age - 12,8 +/- 2,9). An adapted modified version of R. Cattell's "Children's Personality Questionnaire" (CPQ), a "Personality Questionnaire for children" (an adapted version of the "Eysenck Personality Questionnaire for children" (EPQ-J)), the "State-Trait Anxiety Inventory" (STAI) were used for psychometric analysis. The prepared Russian-language version of the "Short Health Anxiety Inventory" showed sufficient internal consistency, high retest reliability, discriminativeness, external and constructive validity. The original two-component structure of the inventory was confirmed. When checking reliability/internal consistency, the a-Cronbach coefficients were 0,860 for the "Short Health Anxiety Inventory" in general, 0,845 for the "Fear of getting sick" scale and 0,822 for the "Fear of negative consequences of the disease" scale. The author's three-component structure of the questionnaire has been created, consisting of 11 items and allowing to determine indicators on three scales: "Fear of getting sick", "Vigilance to bodily sensations" and "Fear of negative consequences of the disease". The results obtained indicate the possibility of using the Russian-language version of this questionnaire, both in full and in shortened (11-point) versions to study health anxiety in children due to its satisfactory psychometric characteristics, simplicity and ease of use.