English 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.
