This paper presents a revised version of the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), a recently developed and widely used quantitative measure of the five components of illness representations in Leventhal's self-regulatory model. The revised version stemmed from a need to deal with minor psychometric problems with two subscales, and to include additional subscales, assessing cyclical timeline perceptions, illness coherence, and emotional representations. Item selection was determined by principal components analyses which verified the factorial structure of the questionnaire in a sample of 711 patients from 8 different illness groups. Further analysis provided good evidence for both the internal reliability of the subscales and the short (3 week) and longer term (6 month) retest reliability. The IPQ-R also demonstrated sound discriminant, known group and predictive validity. While it is possible that the new subscales will vary in their applicability in different patient groups, the IPQ-R provides a more comprehensive and psychometrically acceptable assessment of the key components of patients' perceptions of illness.

The present study was designed to evaluate the degree to which variations in reported adherence to preventer medication for asthma could be explained by two sets of beliefs: perceptions of asthma and perceptions of asthma medication (beliefs about its necessity and concerns over its use). It also begins the empirical testing of an extended self-regulatory model, which includes treatment beliefs as well as illness perceptions. Using a cross-sectional design, 100 community-based patients completed validated questionnaires assessing their perceptions of asthma, beliefs about preventer inhalers and reported adherence to them. The findings showed that non-adherent behaviours were associated with doubts about the necessity of medication and concerns about its potential adverse effects and with more negative perceived consequences of illness. A hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed that socio-demographic and clinical factors explained only a small amount of variance in adherence whereas illness perceptions and treatment beliefs were both more substantial independent predictors. The best fit Amos analysis showed that illness perceptions influenced adherence both directly and indirectly via treatment beliefs, which, in turn, were the strongest predictors. The findings lend preliminary support for an extended self-regulatory model of treatment adherence, which incorporates beliefs about treatment as well as illness perceptions.

Objective: This paper aims to systematically review the use and performance of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Brief IPQ). Design: Electronic databases were searched for papers administering the Brief IPQ published in peer-reviewed journals. Data were extracted from the results for meta-analysis. Main outcome measures: Use by illness population, country, language and study design. The questionnaire’s concurrent validity, predictive validity, sensitivity to change, discriminant validity and mean scores for different populations were summarised. Results: The review included 188 papers. The Brief IPQ has been administered to patients from age 8 to over 80, with a wide range of illnesses, in 26 languages from 36 countries. Pooled correlations between illness perceptions and depression, anxiety, blood glucose levels and quality of life were consistent with previous research and theory (range .25–.49 for consequences, identity and emotional representations; −.12 to −.27 for personal control). All items were able to predict some outcomes up to one-year follow-up. Each subscale demonstrated sensitivity to change after intervention in randomised controlled trials with the personal control and causal items showing most frequent change. Conclusions: The Brief IPQ is widely used and has good psychometric properties. More studies should include and analyse the causal item.

Many parents make a conscious decision not to vaccinate their child. Multiple beliefs and perceptions surround this choice. If uptake of routine child vaccination is to increase, public health communications about vaccines must be informed by evidence on the factors affecting uptake. We conducted a systematic review to investigate psychological, social and contextual factors associated with uptake of routine vaccines in young children. Studies were included if they reported analyses of the association between psychological factors and uptake or included parents' self-reported reasons for or against vaccination. Our search identified 9110 citations after deduplication. Sixty-eight citations describing sixty-four studies were included in the review. The quality of the studies was mixed. There is strong evidence for an association between vaccination uptake and: not perceiving vaccines to cause adverse effects; general positive attitudes towards vaccination; positive vaccine recommendations; and perceiving fewer practical difficulties of vaccination. While there was good evidence for an association between vaccination and perceived susceptibility to the illness, evidence for an association between perceived severity of an illness and vaccination was weak. Other factors associated with vaccination include knowledge about the vaccine, social influences and trust in the healthcare profession. Having increased information about the vaccine was associated with vaccination, but the influence of different sources of information needs more research. Understanding which factors are consistently associated with the decision to vaccinate one's child is important to identify messages which should be targeted by public health communications about routine child vaccinations.