Valid and Convenient Questionnaire Assessment of Chinese Body Constitution: Item Characteristics, Reliability, and Construct Validation

• DOI: 10.2147/ppa.s373512
• Publication Date: 2022-08-01T16:00:34Z
• Authors: Taoying Lu; Jingwen Yan; Jianfang Chang; Jianxiong Cai; Lingjia Yin; Jiamin Yuan; Li Huang; Yingshuai Li; Minghua Bai; Kit-Tai Hau; Darong Wu; Zhimin Yang
• Keywords: Promotion (chess)

Body constitution is a fundamental concept in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for clinical diagnosis, treatment of illness, and community-based health promotion. Clinical assessment patients' body constitutions, however, has never been easy consistent, even by well-trained clinicians TCM practitioners. Therefore, questionnaires such as the popular Constitution Medicine Questionnaire (CCMQ) can be an appealing convenient alternative. The present research borrowed advanced methodologies questionnaire development psychology other social sciences to examine performance CCMQ terms (i) strength relations each item with its designated constitution, (ii) reliabilities (iii) overall 9-constitution structure. This provided empirical evidence support use proposed directions refinement future revisions or similar measures.A total 1571 volunteers from three villages southern China participated survey. characteristics, reliabilities, interconstitution correlations, confirmatory factor analysis 9-body-constitution structure were examined.The results generally supported appropriateness observations (the items) classification Nevertheless, some relatively weaker items, pairs meanings, highly overlapping constitutions identified revisions.The measured 9 efficiently reasonably good reliability construct validity. Given various challenges assessing experienced clinicians, provides alternative measure healthy participants large-scale community promotion programs. study also demonstrated how help validate refine complementary measures.