Confirmatory and Exploratory Factor Analysis for Validating the Phlegm Pattern Questionnaire for Healthy Subjects

Background. Phlegm pattern questionnaire (PPQ) was developed to evaluate and diagnose phlegm pattern in Korean Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, but it was based on a dataset from patients who visited the hospital to consult with a clinician regarding their health without any strict exclusion or inclusion. In this study, we reinvestigated the construct validity of PPQ with a new dataset and confirmed the feasibility of applying it to a healthy population. Methods. 286 healthy subjects were finally included and their responses to PPQ were acquired. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted and the model fit was discussed. We extracted a new factor structure by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and compared the two factor structures. Results. In CFA results, the model fit indices are acceptable (RMSEA = 0.074) or slightly less than the good fit values (CFI = 0.839, TLI = 0.860). Many average variances extracted were smaller than the correlation coefficients of the factors, which shows the somewhat insufficient discriminant validity. Conclusions. Through the results from CFA and EFA, this study shows clinically acceptable model fits and suggests the feasibility of applying PPQ to a healthy population with relatively good construct validity and internal consistency.