The Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS): A psychometric evaluation on a non-clinical population

The Illness Attitude Scale (IAS) was devised to assess hypochondria and abnormal illness behaviour and described as having nine sub-scales (Kellner, Abridged Manual of the Illness Attitude Scale, 1987). However, no previous studies have examined the factor structure of this instrument. Factor analytic results from this study showed the IAS to have a four factor structure: 1. (1) general hypochondria,2. (2) symptom experience and frequency of treatments,3. (3) thanaphobia and4. (4) fear of coronary heart disease and associated preventative health habits. This solution was shown to be both reliable and valid, but the reliability of a number of the original IAS sub-scales was questioned.