Psychometric Properties of the Inventory of Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services (Chinese Version)

Abstract

Research on underutilization patterns of mental health services among older Chinese immigrants is limited, partly due to the absence of translated, psychometrically sound measures for assessing attitudes towards seeking help. In this study we interviewed 200 older Chinese Canadian immigrants using a translated version of the Inventory of Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services scale (IASMHS), and assessed mental health care utilization over the past 12 months and intentions to seek help. Confirmatory factor analysis failed to replicate the original three-factor structure; thus, we used exploratory factor analysis to create a 20-item Chinese version, the C-IASMHS. It had acceptable internal consistency and was positively correlated with intentions to seek help. The Help-Seeking Propensity subscale had the strongest psychometric properties whereas the Psychological Openness subscale performed poorly based on factor analysis results and unacceptable internal consistency. Future research should focus on the conceptual equivalence of psychological openness among Chinese older adults.

Inventory of Attitudes toward Seeking Mental Health Services: Psychometric Properties among Adolescents

“…The IASMHS was subjected to EFA, validating a three-factor structure, comprised of the following dimensions: help-seeking propensity, indifference to stigma and psychological openness. These results not only corroborated the original study of the inventory (Mackenzie et al 2004) but also the Portuguese study (Fonseca et al 2017) as well as numerous other international studies (e.g., Hyland et al 2014;Kantor et al 2017;Tieu et al 2018).…”

“…Item 23 loaded on the help-seeking propensity factor, which was not expected, however it was retained for exhibiting adequate characteristics. The reduction of the scale to 20 items has already been observed in other studies (Tieu et al 2018;Tuliao et al 2019). Regarding the items with limitations, it is observed that these seem to be constant in the literature (Kantor et al 2017;Tieu et al 2018;Tuliao et al 2019) since items 1, 4, 7 and/or 14 have frequently been shown to be problematic and item 23 has often revealed factor loading problems.…”

“…The psychological openness factor revealed a value (α = 0.54; Ω = 0.57) which was not desirable; however, in scales with a reduced number of items, such as this one, we should expect internal consistency values to be inferior, since an increased number of items leads to increased internal consistency (Field 2018). Furthermore, the reduced internal consistency observed in the psychological openness factor is a well-corroborated occurrence (e.g., Fonseca et al 2017;Kantor et al 2017;Tieu et al 2018), since, in several studies, this factor's Cronbach's alpha has tended frequently to be below 0.70 and lower than the value achieved on the total scale and/or on the other factors.…”

“…The IASMHS was also employed in a study of 200 Chinese Canadian immigrants (68.5% female; M age = 72.99; SD = 10.12), again confirming the adequacy of the threefactor model, though with a reduction in the scale to 20 items (items 1, 7, 12, and 14 were problematic) (Tieu et al 2018). The reliability analysis revealed acceptable results (total scale: α = 0.75; help-seeking propensity: α = 0.79; indifference to stigma: α = 0.77) except for the psychological openness factor (α = 0.59).…”

“…The reliability analysis revealed acceptable results (total scale: α = 0.75; help-seeking propensity: α = 0.79; indifference to stigma: α = 0.77) except for the psychological openness factor (α = 0.59). Moreover, the help-seeking propensity factor correlated positively with intentions to use mental health services (Tieu et al 2018).…”