Background: Adolescents’ health choices have beenwidely researched, but the ethical basis of these choices,
namely their rights, duties, and responsibilities, have been disregarded and scale is required to measure these.
Objective: To describe the development of a scale that measures adolescents’ rights, duties, and
responsibilities in relation to health choices and document the preliminary scale testing.
Research design: A multi-phase development method was used to construct the Health Rights Duties and
Responsibilities (HealthRDR) scale. The concepts and content were defined through document analysis, a
systematic literature review, and focus groups. The content validity and clarity of the items were evaluated
by expert panel of 23 adolescents, school nurses, and researchers. We calculated the content validity index
and the content validity ratio at on item and scale levels. Preliminary testing was conducted with 200
adolescents aged 15–16 years. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha correlation, and statistics for the
item-analysis were calculated.
Ethical considerations: Ethical approval and permission were obtained according to national legislation
and responsible research practice was followed. Informed consent was obtained from the participants and
the parents were informed about the study.
Findings: The Health Rights Duties and Responsibilities scale comprises of four sub-scales with 148 items: 15
on health choices, 36 on rights, 47 on duties, and 50 on responsibilities. The items had a 0.93 content validity
index and a 0.85 content validity ratio. Cronbach’s alpha correlation coefficient was 0.99 for the total scale and
the individual sub-scales scoreswere health choices (0.93), rights (0.97), responsibilities (0.99), and duties (0.98).
Discussion: The findings are discussed in light of the ethical concepts and validity and reliability of the
developed scale.
Conclusion: The Health Rights Duties and Responsibilities scale defines and understands adolescents’
rights, duties, and responsibilities in relation to health choices and has good content validity. Further testing
and refinement of the concepts are needed.