Healthy Lifestyle Choices Scale
The Healthy Lifestyle Choices Scale is a 16-item instrument that taps intentions to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors, including nutrition, exercise, and goal setting (Melnyk & Small, 2003d). Subjects respond to each item on a 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 1, “strongly disagree,” to 5, “strongly agree.” Examples of questions include, “I will make healthy food choices,” “I will exercise on a regular basis,” and “I will set goals I can accomplish.” A higher score on the scale indicates greater intentions of engaging in healthy lifestyle behaviors, with a possible range of scores between 16 and 80 for the summed items. Face validity was established with 10 teens and content validity was established by eight adolescent health experts. The Cronbach's α for this scale was .92 for this sample of teens.