The Short Health Anxiety Inventory: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: The Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI) measures health anxiety in medical and non-medical contexts.

Objective: To review the literature pertaining to the psychometric properties of the SHAI in non-clinical, clinical, and medical samples. Meta-analysis was also conducted to examine the strength of associations between the SHAI and other constructs.

Methods: Direct search of digital databases for papers that cited the original SHAI publication.

Results: Seventy-eight papers were identified, with 42 providing relevant information. The SHAI has acceptable Cronbach's alpha scores, strong construct validity, and is sensitive to treatment. Discrepancies have been observed between the findings of factor analytic studies, largely as a result of varying methods used. Overall, there appears to be greatest support for the original two factors, with one factor assessing health anxiety and one factor assessing negative consequences of illness. As expected, individuals with hypochondriasis score higher as compared to non-clinical samples. The strongest association was observed between the SHAI and other measures of health anxiety, followed by measures related to health anxiety vulnerability, and then general anxiety and worry.

Conclusions: The SHAI is a psychometrically sound tool for assessing health anxiety across samples. Future studies are needed, however, to assess test-retest reliability, incremental validity, and cut-off scores as well as use of the SHAI among diverse samples.