Psychometric Evaluation of the Chinese Version of Decisional Conflict Scale in Chinese Young Women Making HPV Vaccination Decisions

PURPOSE: The Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) is a well-known scale for measuring personal decisional conflict, particularly when a person feels uninformed about the risks/benefits of choices, is unclear about personal values, and feels unsupported in making a choice. Higher scores of DCS indicate higher decisional conflict. In the present study, we aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the DCS among Chinese young women making HPV vaccination decisions. METHODS: A total of 107 HPV-unvaccinated Chinese women aged 18–26 completed the survey assessing decisional conflict, knowledge and decision of HPV vaccination. Factorial validity, construct validity, and reliability of the DCS were examined. RESULTS: The mean score of the DCS-16 was 41.5 (SD=20.0). Principal component analysis extracted a 3-factor model of DCS containing 13 items (DCS-13), but both the original DCS-16 and extracted DCS-13 showed poor factorial validity. An alternative DCS-10 revealed a good fit to the data with Cronbach’s alpha 0.86. Some subscales of the three versions of DCS showed inconsistent correlation. CONCLUSION: The DCS-10 demonstrated good model fit to the data. By using the DCS-10 total score rather than sub-scores to measure Chinese young women’s HPV vaccination decisional conflict a more valid assessment can be obtained.