Abstract

The central issue of this report is the psychosocial part of the questionnaire of the 'Peilstationsproject Hart- en Vaatziekten". This part includes five short questionnaires about social experiences, neuroticism, coping, John Henryism (active life-attitude) and 'wish to live'. These subjects are covered by 68 questions. First, the background to the different questionnaires is discussed. Thereafter, two subjects are explored. The first subject dealt with a non-response analysis of the psychosocial questions. Respondents who answered all psychosocial questions are compared to respondents who answered none of these questions with respect to their sociodemographic characteristics. Nationality and education appeared to be important factors. Furthermore, the degree of non-response to the different items of each subquestionnaire and of the subquestionnaires themselves were studied. The best reponse was obtained by the questionnaires on neuroticism and 'wish to live'. Recommendations to improve the non- response of the psychosocial questions are proposed. Subjects that need further research are also pointed out. The second subject dealt with the reliability of the different psycho-social subquestionnaires. The reliability can be studied in two ways by looking at the internal consistency (one measurement) and the test-retest-reliability (repeated measurement). The internal consistency was measured by means of Cronbach's alpha. The questionnaires of neuroticism and John Henryism have a high and the questionnaire on social experience a reasonable Cronbach's alpha. Only a part of the questionnaire on coping has a reasonable score. When looking at the internal consistency of the questionnaire of 'wish to live', this questionnaire is unreliable. Based on these results, it was advised to study a new operationalisation of the concepts 'coping' and 'wish to live'. The test-retest-reliability was based on repeated measurements with a one- year interval. The questionnaire on neuroticism appeared to be the most stable questionnaire. The reason for this stability is that this questionnaire measures personal traits, which do not tend to change over time. In contrast, the other four questionnaires measure a primarily state.