Confirmatory and Exploratory Factor Analysis for Validating the Phlegm Pattern Questionnaire for Healthy Subjects

Table 5

Internal consistency of factors.

Cronbach’s α	item	Cronbach’s α if item is deleted
Factor 1; 0.881	(5) I feel my heart palpitate.	0.860
	(7) I feel heavy in the chest.	0.858
	(25) I have flank pain.	0.863
	(6) I am startled by faint noise.	0.867
	(4) I have ringing in the ears.	0.876
	(3) I feel dizzy.	0.864
	(11) I feel short of breath.	0.869
	(14) I have a poor appetite.	0.873
	(24) I have pain in the joints.	0.877
	(20) I have a lump somewhere on my body.	0.882
Factor 2; 0.811	(22) I have dark circles under the eyes.	0.774
	(21) My face is yellowish.	0.773
	(12) I feel fatigued.	0.770
	(13) I feel heavy or weak in the limbs.	0.761
	(18) My stomach or intestine rumbles.	0.799
	(23) I feel itchy.	0.809
Factor 3; 0.76	(9) I have sputum in my throat.	0.632
	(8) I have a cough.	0.650
	(10) I feel a foreign body present in the throat, neither swallowed nor ejected.	0.689
	(19) My stool is mucousy.	0.808
Factor 4; 0.786	(16) I have indigestion.	0.634
	(17) I have a feeling of fullness in the stomach with just a little food.	0.657
	(15) I feel sick in the stomach.	0.806
Factor 5; 0.765	(2) I have a headache.	—
	(1) I feel unclear in the head.	—

Cronbach’s α increases if item is deleted
— Cronbach’s α cannot be calculated because factor 5 has only 2 items.