Measures
Healthy Lifestyle Beliefs Scale
The Healthy Lifestyle Beliefs Scale is a 16-item instrument that was adapted from other beliefs scales used by Melnyk in prior studies (Melnyk and Small, 2003c and Melnyk et al., 2006). The Healthy Lifestyle Beliefs Scale taps beliefs/confidence about various facets of maintaining a healthy lifestyle (e.g., “I believe that I can be more active” and “I am sure that I will do what is best to lead a healthy life”). Subjects respond to each item on a 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree.” Scores from each item are summed for a total score ranging from 16 to 80. Face validity was established with 10 teens. Content validity was established by eight adolescent health specialists. The Cronbach's α for this scale with this sample was .94.