Developing and Validating a Measure of Chinese Cultural Views of Health and Cancer

To develop and validate quantitative scales that measure Chinese cultural views about health and cancer, cultural views were assessed by a 30-item scale through telephone inter-views with 438 Chinese-American women aged 50 and older. Cultural subscales were identified using principal component analysis and validated by their associations with age at immigration and breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer (CRC) screening patterns. The overall scale had good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha =.79). Factor analysis yielded seven cultural subscales—fatalism, hot-cold balance, use of herbs, self-care, medical examina-tion, lifestyle, and Western medicine (alpha =.39 to.82). The majority of the cultural sub-scales were significantly associated with age at immigration (p <.001). Fatalism, Self-Care, and Medical Examination subscales consistently predicted nonadherence to breast, cervical, and CRC screening recommendations, even after considering other fac-tors. Chinese cultural views consist of at least seven domains and may influence olde