Public beliefs about the consequences of living with obesity in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

Table 1 Final principal components analysis pattern matrix

	Factor
	1	2	3
Health Beliefs Subscale
People should maintain a healthy weight for optimal health.	0.822	0.042	− 0.156
Losing weight would greatly improve the health of people living with obesity.	0.726	− 0.118	0.156
A person with a healthy bodyweight can lead a more active life.	0.686	0.048	0.136
People with obesity need more medical care.	0.656	− 0.013	0.278
People with obesity would be treated better if they lost weight.	0.528	0.138	0.263
Costs Subscale
People have to deny themselves a great deal to avoid obesity.	0.156	0.741	− 0.207
Maintaining a healthy bodyweight is expensive.	0.045	0.737	0.028
Maintaining a healthy bodyweight is boring.	− 0.212	0.701	0.183
Maintaining a healthy bodyweight makes life less fun.	− 0.310	0.691	0.350
Maintaining a healthy bodyweight takes a lot of effort.	0.418	0.684	− 0.220
Social and Aesthetic Beliefs Subscale
People with overweight or obesity are considered less attractive.	− 0.013	0.035	0.802
People with a healthy bodyweight are taken more seriously.	0.148	0.006	0.717
People with obesity are embarrassed by the way they look.	0.259	0.039	0.613
People with obesity would have a better social life if they lost weight.	0.427	− 0.039	0.513

Final scale items are N=14, as one item was eliminated due to insufficient loading onto any of the three constructs
The threshold set for the strength with which an item significantly loaded on a component was ≥ 0.5
A sensitivity analysis showed that the results with imputed values followed a similar pattern to those with the missing values so the analysis with imputed values is presented throughout