Establishment of a Weight Management Scale for Patients with Congestive Heart Failure.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to develop a rating scale for the weight management of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). METHODS The original pool of items was created through in-depth interviews and a literature review. Scale validity was analyzed based on face validity, content validity, and structure validity. The content validity and structure validity were evaluated. The overall internal consistency reliability were assessed by using Cronbach's alpha and retest reliability test. RESULTS A total of 190 CHF patients were enrolled but 5 refused. The original 19 items were then refined to a scale of 16 items. The final scale included four factors (weight monitoring, knowledge, confidence, and behaviours related to weight management), which accounted for 58.7% of the variance. Content validity ratio on the content validity was 0.88. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.843 and the retest reliability was 0.833. CONCLUSIONS The Chinese CHF-related weight management scale developed has high reliability and validity. KEY WORDS Congestive heart failure; Reliability; Scale; Validity; Weight management.