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Cited by 65Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesPsychosomatic Disorders and Their TreatmentsPsychological Treatments and Assessments

Development and initial validation of a measure of metacognitive beliefs in health anxiety: The MCQ-HA

Bailey, Robin, Wells, Adrian·2015·Psychiatry Research
DOI 10.1016/j.psychres.2015.11.035
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Abstract

Metacognitive beliefs have been shown to correlate with emotional disorders and more recently have been implicated in health anxiety. Research exploring these beliefs have tended to use the Metacognition Questionnaire (MCQ), which is a general measure. To facilitate research on the metacognitive model applied to health anxiety the present study reports on the development and initial evaluation of a new specific metacognitive measure of health anxiety, the Metacognitions Questionnaire-Health Anxiety (MCQ-HA). Principal components analysis identified 14 suitable items to be explored. Subsequent exploratory factor analysis of the MCQ-HA identified three factors: "Beliefs that Thoughts can cause Illness", "Beliefs about Biased thinking", and "Beliefs that Thoughts are Uncontrollable". Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three factor model with all selected goodness-of-fit statistics equivalent to or better than recommended values. Preliminary evidence suggests good internal-consistency, incremental, convergent and discriminant validity in relation to associated measures. The MCQ-HA appears to be a potentially useful predictor of health anxiety.

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  • Only one randomized controlled trial of treatments for cyberchondria is reported in the Cochrane library, but this study is still unpublished and the results are not yet available.

    “Only one randomized controlled trial of treatments for CYB is reported in the Cochrane library [111], but this study is still unpublished, and the results are not yet available.”

    From Is cyberchondria a new transdiagnostic digital compulsive syndrome? A systematic review of the evidence (2020) · cites this paper as [111]

    The Results passage describes measures of health anxiety, and the References include work on its treatment, but neither addresses a cyberchondria trial in the Cochrane Library. Searches for a cyberchondria randomized trial and for cyberchondria treatments in Cochrane found no passage about a trial’s publication status or results; page numbers were not provided. (LLM, conf=0.74)

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References 78 · Cited by 65

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Authors
Bailey, R., & Wells, A.
Affiliations
University of Lancashire (GB)
Corresponding author
Bailey, Robin
ORCID
Bailey, Robin
Venue
Psychiatry Research
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-12
Volume
230
Issue
3
Pages
871-877
ISSN
0165-1781 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.psychres.2015.11.035
OpenAlex
W2179778029
Cited by
65
References
78
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2012: 1
FWCI
4.02
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Psychiatry Research (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • CLOK (University of Central Lancashire) (acceptedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychological Treatments and Assessments
Keywords
metacognitive beliefs, health anxiety, metacognitive model, psychometric validation, scale development, illness beliefs, factor structure
MeSH terms
Metacognition, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Attitude to Health, Factor Analysis, Statistical, Humans, Male, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Thinking, Reproducibility of Results, Principal Component Analysis

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