number of subjects. In order to research further into individuals’ beliefs about illness,
researchers in New Zealand and the UK have developed the ‘Illness Perception Question-
naire’ (IPQ) (Weinman et al. 1996). This questionnaire asks subjects to rate a series of
statements about their illness. These statements reflect the dimensions of identity (e.g. a
set of symptoms such as pain, tiredness), consequences (e.g. ‘My illness has had major
consequences on my life’), time line (e.g. ‘My illness will last a short time’), cause (e.g.
‘Stress was a major factor in causing my illness’) and cure/control (e.g. ‘There is a lot
I can do to control my symptoms’). This questionnaire has been used to examine beliefs
about illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes and arthritis and provides
further support for the dimensions of illness cognitions (Weinman and Petrie 1997).
Recently a revised version of the IPQ has been published – IPQR (Moss-Morris et al.
2002) which had better psychometric properties than the original IPQ and included
three additional subscales: cyclical timeline perceptions, illness coherence and emotional
representations. However, people have beliefs not only about their illness but also about
their treatment, whether it is medication, surgery or behaviour change. In line with this
Horne (1997; Horne et al. 1999) developed a questionnaire to assess beliefs about medi-
cine which was conceptualized along four dimensions: two of these are specific to the
medication being taken: ‘specific necessity’ (to reflect whether their medicine is seen as
important) and ‘specific concerns’ (to reflect whether the individual is concerned about
side effects) and two are these are general beliefs about all medicines: ‘general-overuse’
(to reflect doctors over use of medicines) and ‘general-harm’ (to reflect the damage that
medicines can do).Measurement issues
Beliefs about illness can be assessed using a range measures. Some research has used
interviews (e.g. Leventhal et al. 1980; Leventhal and Lorenz 1985; Schmidt and
Frohling 2000), some has used formal questionnaires (e.g. Horne and Weinman 2002;
Llewellyn et al. 2003), some have used vignette studies (e.g. French et al. 2002) and
others have used a repertory grid method (e.g. Walton and Eves 2001). French and
colleagues asked whether the form of method used to elicit beliefs about illness influ-
enced the types of beliefs reported. In one study French et al. (2002) compared the
impact of eliciting beliefs using either a questionnaire or a vignette. Participants were
asked either simply to rate a series of causes for heart attack (the questionnaire) or to
read a vignette about a man and to estimate his chances of having a heart attack. The
results showed that the two different methods resulted in different beliefs about the
causes of heart attack and different importance placed upon these causes. Specifically,
when using the questionnaire smoking and stress came out as more important causes
than family history, whereas when using the vignette smoking and family history came
out as more important causes than stress. In a similar vein French et al. (2001) carried
out a systematic review of studies involving attributions for causes of heart attack and
compared these causes according to method used. The results showed stressors, fate or
luck were more common beliefs about causes when using interval rating scales (i.e. 1–5)
than when studies used dichotomous answers (i.e. yes/no).
In summary, it appears that individuals may show consistent beliefs about illness52 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY