Psychometric assessment of scales measuring HIV public stigma, drug-use public stigma and fear of HIV infection among young adolescents and their parents

Abstract

The objective of this study was to design and assess measurement instruments that accurately measure the levels of stigma among individuals with a primarily collectivist culture. A cross-sectional study was conducted among middle school students and their parents or guardians in a rural area of China. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine and determine the latent factors of the sub-scales of stigma respectively, among students and their parents. Factor analyses identified three sub-scales: HIV public stigma (seven items), drug-use public stigma (nine items), and fear of HIV infection (seven items). There were no items with cross-loading onto multiple factors, supporting the distinctness of the constructs that these scales were meant to measure. Goodness of fit indices indicated that a three-factor solution fit, the data at an acceptable level in the student sample (χ² /degree ratio=1.98, comparative fit index [CFI]=0.92, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA]=0.055, standardized root mean square residual [SRMR]=0.057) and in the parent sample (χ²/degree ratio=1.95, CFI=0.91, RMSEA=0.06, SRMR=0.059). Reliability of the three scales was excellent (Cronbach's alpha: 0.78–0.92 for students; 0.80–0.94 for parents or guardians) and stable across split samples and for the data as a whole. The scales are brief and suitable for use in developing countries where the collectivist culture prevails.

Keywords:

• HIV public stigma
• drug-use public stigma
• measurement scale
• psychometric assessment
• Chinese

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the staff from Guangxi Medical University for participation in the study and to all the participants who gave so willingly of their time to provide the study data. Funding for this study was awarded to Hongjie Liu by NIH-NIDA Grant R03DA019397.