Breast cancer mortality in the US has declined except among Asian American women. Mammograms decrease mortality and Asian women use mammograms less often than non Asians. Champion’s Health Belief Model Scale has good validity and reliability for describing beliefs related to breast cancer and mammograms among white and African American women. Asian Americans represent a number of different cultures with different languages, thus measurement of such beliefs needs to be specific to the populations and their cultures. The purpose of this study is to develop a culturally appropriate tool for measuring beliefs related to breast cancer and mammograms among Thai women, a subgroup of Asian Americans. This study describes the psychometric properties of the Thai Breast Cancer Belief Scale. The scale was derived from Champion's scale and enhanced with Thai-specific items developed from a qualitative study. Champion’s scale was translated into Thai using Brislin’s translation model. This requires repetitions of independent translation and blind back-translation by a team of bilingual translators until the back-translation reflects congruence of meaning between the English and Thai versions. The modified scale (translation plus new Thai-specific items) was administered to a convenience sample of 250 women from Thai communities in St. Louis, Chicago, and San Fransicisco. A Cronbach's alpha of .89 indicated internal reliability and construct validity was examined using factor analysis. The analysis yielded four factors: susceptibility to and the seriousness of breast cancer, benefits, and barriers to mammograms with factor loading from .350 to .833. The Thai Breast Cancer Belief Scale indicated good quality of measurement. This research was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute, Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research initiative (1P50CA095815-02).

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