Psychometric testing of a spiritual well-being scale for people with cancer

Abstract

© 2020, Thailand Nursing and Midwifery Council. All rights reserved. Spiritual well-being is crucial to the health outcomes of people with cancer and is influenced by culture, religious perspectives, and the characteristics of particular societies. There was no Thai instrument that measured this important concept, consequently, the Spiritual Well-being Scale for People with Cancer was developed by researchers and its psychometric properties were tested in this study. This instrument contains 20 items and the content validity index was.88. People with cancer aged 18 years and over, who had at least two experiences of treatment, and could communicate in the Thai language were selected to be study participants. The dimensions of spiritual well-being were identified using exploratory factor analysis (n = 190) and internal consistency testing. Four factors accounting for 58.35% of the total variance were: Spiritual strengthening, spiritual suffering, spiritual uncertainty, and spiritual readiness. The confirmatory factor analysis was tested (n = 203), and the results indicated that the measurement model had a good fit with the data. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the entire scale was.76. The correlation coefficient was tested with the other three instruments, and the results were between.58 and.75 (p <.001). The instrument has an acceptable level of content, construct, and concurrent validity, as well as internal consistency reliability. Nurses and other healthcare profession can use this instrument to assess and evaluate intervention designs to improve the spiritual well-being of people with cancer. It is recommended that the scale be further tested with other groups of people with cancer in Thailand.