Determining the adequacy of a health promotion self‐care interview guide with healthy, middle‐aged, Mexican American women: A pilot study

Abstract

The Hispanic/Latino population is the second largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, with Mexican Americans comprising 60.4% of the total. Existing research instruments and procedures must be made culturally specific, both theoretically and empirically, for use with this population. Our purpose in the present study was to determine whether one part of the Health Promotion Self-Care Interview Guide (HPSCIG), developed to identify self-care actions that promote well-being in healthy, middle-aged Anglo American and African American women (Hartweg, 1991, 1993), was culturally sensitive for use with Mexican American women. This was a necessary step before the full HPSCIG was translated into Spanish for a larger bilingual study. Twenty Mexican American women identified 232 self-care actions they took to promote well-being as they defined it. More than 81% of the self-care actions were performed to meet the universal self-care requisites, 11% were performed to meet the developmental requisites of middle-age, and 2% were performed to meet health deviation self-care requisites. Six percent of the actions could not be classified using the theoretical coding scheme. Inherent in the study were questions about the congruence and relevance of self-care as a concept in this population. The findings support the use of the HPSCIG with healthy, middle-aged Mexican American women.

Health practices of adult Hispanic women

“…Since the late 1970s, Hispanic populations have been extensively studied. Researchers focused on families, middle-aged or older adults, grandparents, widows and pregnant women (Clark 1970, Ailinger 1977, Bauwens 1977, Kay 1977, Hautman & Harrison 1982, Smith 1988, Stroup-Benham & Trevino 1991, Sanders-Phillips 1994, Hartweg & Berbiglia 1996, Mans®eld & Voda 1997. Others studied Hispanic disease/illness behaviours and curing practices performed once illness occurred (Bauwens 1977, Kay 1977, Smith 1988, Spector 1991, Frank-Stromborg & Olsen 1993, Goldsmith 1993, White et al 1993, Fox & Roetzheim 1994, Sanders-Phillips 1994, Friedman et al 1995, Suarez et al 1997.…”

Culture, migration et instrument de mesure: défis incontournables

“…Ainsi, il est recommand6 d'impliquer des membres de la communaut6 ethnoculturelle cibl6e d6s le d6but de la recherche afin de s'assurer de r6pondre aux pr6occupations pertinentes (Henderson et al, 1992;Porter &Villarruel, 1993), de comprendre le probl6me selon la perspective du groupe (Porter & Villarruel, 1993;Mays & Jackson, 1991) et finalement de ne pas omettre des facettes du problbme qui risqueraient d'etre absentes dans une perspective ethnocentrique du concepteur (Mays & Jackson, 1991;Hartweg & Berbiglia, 1996). (Porter &Villarruel, 1993).…”

“…I1 est important de rechercher l'6quivalence des significations culturelles (Mays & Jackson, 1991;Ferketich et al, 1993;Guillemin, Bombardier & Beaton, 1993;Hartweg & Berbiglia, 1996). Deyo (1984) a remarqu6 des diff6rences dans l'interpr6tation des questions malgr6 la justesse de la traduction.…”

Research Issues

“…Three of these measures were designed for use with adults, one for children (Denyes, 1982). Knowledge of the validity and reliability of these instruments has been enhanced through other studies that examine the use of the instrument with varying language or culture groups, such as the one by Hartweg and Berbiglia (1996). While most of the instrument development has focused on SCA, a few studies look at measuring self-care practices in general or describing sets of self-care behaviors for a specific technology or disease entity.…”