Short Health Anxiety Inventory: Factor structure and psychometric properties in Spanish adolescents

Abstract

The Short Health Anxiety Inventory is a common screening tool for assessing health anxiety among adolescents; however, its psychometric properties and internal structure have not been evaluated within a Spanish-speaking population. The goodness of fit of four models of the latent structure of the Short Health Anxiety Inventory was tested by using confirmatory factor analysis in a sample of 832 Spanish secondary school adolescents. Based on these results, the reliability of the original two-factor model was tested. Differences in health anxiety by gender and age were also examined. The results support use of the Spanish version of the Short Health Anxiety Inventory by researchers and clinicians among Spanish adolescents.