Abstract: Objective: To develop and test the reliability and validity of a Dietary Health Belief Questionnaire for Hemodialysis (HD) Patients. Methods: Based on the Health Belief Model (HBM), and a review of relevant literatures, the item pool of the scale was initially formulated. Following Delphi expert consultation, the dietary health belief questionnaire was initially drafted. In order to understand this scale's psychometric properties and finalize the official version of the questionnaire, a total of 281 HD patients were investigated to perform item analysis and exploratory factor analysis. Then, we included a total of 418 HD patients from 5 hospitals to determine the reliability and validity of the questionnaire following confirmatory factor analysis. Results: A total of 23 items were included in the questionnaire with 5 common factors following exploratory factor analysis. The cumulative variance contribution rate was 77.2%. The content validity of each Item (I-CVI) in the questionnaire was ranged from 0.8 to 1.0. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the total questionnaire was 0.879, with the test-retest reliability being 0.968. Conclusion: The questionnaire has good reliability and validity and could be used to evaluate the dietary health belief of hemodialysis patients.

Key words: hemodialysis; diet; Health Belief Model; behavior change; questionnaire preparation; reliability; validity