Examining racial differences in older men's knowledge of osteoporosis

Numerous studies have explored knowledge of osteoporosis, the majority of them focus on White women. Men's knowledge of the disease has been less commonly evaluated. Particularly lacking are studies that consider the role of race in men's knowledge of osteoporosis. This study used Rasch analysis to evaluate reliability and validity and test racial differences in knowledge of osteoporosis based on the combined Facts on Osteoporosis Quiz (FOOQ) and Male Osteoporosis Knowledge Quiz (MOKQ). 1,518 men, age 60+ years, living in a suburban area on the eastern seaboard were studied. The person reliability measure produced a Cronbach Alpha of 0.88. The item reliability measure produced an item to measure correlation of -0.97. The infit mean squares are all well within the range of 0.5 to 1.5 logits indicating a good fit. Only the question about the effect of walking on bone health had an outfit statistic out of range (4.35). Differential Item Functioning found that out of 26 questions Whites and Blacks had significant and substantial (difficulty contrast >.5) differences on two questions. Whites found the question on age and bone building easier (dif = -1.12) than Blacks (dif = -.10, dif contrast = -1.02, p = .0114). The question about the effect of body build on risk was easier for Blacks (dif = 1.21) than Whites (dif = 2.08, dif contrast = .87, p = .0204). The combined FOOQ /MOKQ functioned well across both racial groups tested and is a reliable and valid measure for testing osteoporosis knowledge.