Psicologia: teoria e prática
Print version ISSN 1516-3687
Abstract
OLIVEIRA, José Carlos da Silva and SISTO, Fermino Fernandes. Construção de uma escala de ansiedade para pacientes de ambulatório: um estudo exploratórioThe construction of an anxiety scale for ambulatory patients: a exploratory study. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2004, vol.6, n.1, pp.45-57. ISSN 1516-3687.
This work aimed to construct a scale to evaluate anxiety for ambulatory patients. Six hundred thirty six participants were interviewed in the ambulatory of a college hospital, in Cardiology, Medical Clinic, Dermatology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedia and Urology, with ages from 25 to 50 years old. The scale was composed of 57 sentences and in a first analysis, 13 factors were identified. As this first result provided few possibilities to explain the observed phenomenon, some sentences were eliminated. A second factorial analysis was followed, imposing the three factors configuration; the items, which showed saturation lower than .40, were eliminated. There were 39 sentences with three factors left. The factor 1 nucleus was interpreted with apprehension, agony, factor 2 nucleus was interpreted as fear, threaten and factor 3 nucleus was interpreted as positive emotional reactions of facing anxiolitic situations. From the 3 sub-scales, the one which presented the lowest accuracy by alpha was the factor 3 and the one which presented the highest was factor 1. For the general scale, the accuracy by alpha presented a very satisfactory level.
Keywords : To evaluate; Anxiety; Factor analysis; Hospital.