Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale

For each of the following questions, please circle the number that corresponds to how certain you are that you can do the following tasks regularly at the present time.

1.    How certain are you that you can decrease your pain quite a bit?
Very uncertain 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very certain

 

Items (using the same format as above):

  1. How certain are you that you can decrease your pain quite a bit?
  2. How certain are you that you can keep your arthritis or fibromyalgia pain from interfering with your sleep?
  3. How certain are you that you can keep your arthritis or fibromyalgia pain from interfering with the things you want to do?
  4. How certain are you that you can regulate your activity so as to be active without aggravating your arthritis or fibromyalgia?
  5. How certain are you that you can keep the fatigue caused by your arthritis or fibromyalgia from interfering with the things you want to do?
  6. How certain are you that you can do something to help yourself feel better if you are feeling blue?
  7. As compared with other people with arthritis or fibromyalgia like yours, how certain are you that you can manage pain during your daily activities?
  8. How certain are you that you can deal with the frustration of arthritis or fibromyalgia?

Scoring

The score for each item is the number circled. If two consecutive numbers are circled, code the lower number (less self-efficacy). If the numbers are not consecutive, do not score the item. The score for the scale is the mean of the eight items. If more than two items are missing, do not score the scale.

Characteristics

Tested on 175 subjects with arthritis.

No. of
items
Observed
Range

Mean
Standard
Deviation
Internal Consistency
Reliability
Test-Retest
Reliability
8
1-10
5.53
2.20
.94
NA

Source of Psychometric Data

Stanford Arthritis Self-Management Study participants. Unpublished.

Comments

This 8-item scale is from the original 20 item Arthritis Self-Efficacy scale. We use this scale now, as it is much less burdensome for subjects. The full 20 item scale is in the PDF document (see PDF link at the bottom of this page). For internet studies, we add radio buttons below each number. There is another way that we use to format these items, which takes up less space on a questionnaire, shown also in the PDF document. This scale is available in Spanish.

References

Lorig K, Brown BW Jr, Ung E, Chastain R, Shoor S, Holman HR, Development and evaluation of a scale to measure the perceived self-efficacy of people with arthritis. Arthritis and Rheumatism, 32(1), 1989, pp.37-44.

To download this scale and scoring instructions, right click the link below with your mouse and "Save as" to you hard disk or desktop (for Windows), or double click (Mac):

Download PDF version