The health and suffering scale: Item reduction, reliability and validity among women undergoing rehabilitation for exhaustion and long‐lasting pain

AIM: To investigate the necessity of an item reduction and to evaluate estimates of dimensionality, reliability and validity of the Health and Suffering Scale among two groups of women, one undergoing rehabilitation for exhaustion and long‐lasting pain and one reference group. DESIGN: Psychometric evaluation of the scale using cross‐sectional data. METHOD: The Health and Suffering Scale is a self‐report scale which measures perceived suffering in relation to health on a semantic visual analogue scale. Classical and modern test theory were applied for item reduction and to explore estimates of reliability and validity. RESULTS: The Health and Suffering Scale was found to be unidimensional, nine of originally twenty items were part of a consistent factor structure and hierarchical order. These items were internally consistent, discriminated between patients and healthy respondents, and had an excellent level of separation of individuals experiencing various levels of health and suffering. Re‐test reliability estimates were moderate.