Predictors of community women’s osteoporosis prevention intention — a pilot study

The main purpose of this pilot study was to identify the predictors of community women's osteoporosis prevention intention. The osteoporosis assessment scales were self-developed and contained 5 scales: a demographics scale, a health status scale, an osteoporosis health belief scale (OHBS), a knowledge scale, and a prevention intention scale. The content validity of the five scales ranged from.90 to 1.00. Test-retest was used to examine the reliability of the demographic characteristics scale and the health status scale, which ranged from.9 to 1.0. Meanwhile, the reliability coefficients of the OHBS comprising perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, perceived benefit, and perceived barrier were.75,.90,.80, and.72. In this pilot study, the coefficient of KR-20 for osteoporosis knowledge was.88. The value of Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha for prevention intention was.85. The results of this research were: (1) The averaged scores of the OHBS comprising perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, perceived benefit, and perceived barrier were 2.8 (SD = 0.5), 2.2 (SD = 0.7), 1.9 (SD = 0.4), and 2.9 (SD = 0.7). Meanwhile, the averaged score for women's knowledge on osteoporosis was 10.0 (SD = 2.8). The averaged score for women's intentions for the prevention of osteoporosis was 2.5 (SD = 0.6). (2) There were some significant correlations between OHBS and demographics, health status, knowledge, and prevention intention. (3) Knowledge was positively correlated with perceived barriers, prevention intention, age, self-rated score for health, breast feeding time, and amount of calcium intake. (4) Prevention intention was positively correlated with knowledge, number of children, age of fracture, and hormone replacement therapy. (5) The major factors influencing intention for community women were, in order, knowledge, educational level (high school graduate), number of children (n = 2), self-rated health score, experience of bone density examination (yes), hormone replacement therapy (yes), and kyphosis (yes). These seven items accounted for 45.8% of the variation in intention. The results of this pilot study can help community health professionals evaluate, implement and improve community women's health beliefs regarding prevention of osteoporosis.