perceived barriers to health promotion
were measured using the Barriers to Health
Promoting Activities (BHPA) instrument
(Becker,Stuifbergen,&Sands,1991).This
16-item, four-point scale asks individuals
to indicate how often the listed barriers
keep them from taking care of their health,
with responses ranging from1(never) to 4
(routinely).Higher scores on the summated
rating scale indicate greater perceived barriers.
Cronbach’s alpha wascomputed as a measure
of internal consistency for the total BHPA
and the Motivation and External Barriers
subscales,resulting in alpha coefficients of
.755,.812,and.710,respectively.