Background: Current health measurement instruments tend to measure aspects of ill-health rather than health in general. There is a need for a salutogenic perspective when describing health and developing a health measurement instrument. The aim of this article is to present the development process and quality assessment of a salutogenic health indicator scale.
Methods: A description of health, emanating from the concept of health, positive health and well-being, was used as a basis for the construction of the scale. The scale is a semantic differential consisting of 12 indicator items covering nine heath-related dimensions. A principal component analysis was performed, and three health indicator indexes were constructed. Correlation with self-rated health questions was investigated, weighted kappa values were calculated, and Cronbach's alpha (CA) was used to check internal consistency.
Results: The analysis resulted in a two-factor model, and the indexes were named intrapersonal characteristics (CA= 0.90) and interactive function (CA= 0.84), summarised into health complete (CA= 0.92). Kappa values ranged from 0.44 to 0.67, and correlations with self-rated health status were stronger than those with self-rated sick-leave.
Conclusions: Our health description was characterized by complexity, but the instrument is a short salutogenic health indicator scale. The shortness increases the usability. The instrument seems to be able to offset the current problem of there being a lack of salutogenic health measurement instruments. The results indicate that further testing is justified.