Development and validation of a psychosocial screening instrument for cancer
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Development and validation of a psychosocial screening instrument for cancer Wolfgang Linden*1,2, Dahyun Yi1, Maria Cristina Barroetavena2,3, Regina MacKenzie2 and Richard Doll2 Address: 1Psychology Department, The University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Psychology/UBC, Vancouver BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada, 2British Columbia Cancer Control Agency, Canada and 3Health Care and Epidemiology, University of British Columbia, Canada Email: Wolfgang Linden* - [email protected]; Dahyun Yi - [email protected]; Maria Cristina Barroetavena - [email protected]; Regina MacKenzie - [email protected]; Richard Doll - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 07 September 2005 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2005, 3:54
doi:10.1186/1477-7525-3-54
Received: 13 April 2005 Accepted: 07 September 2005
This article is available from: http://www.hqlo.com/content/3/1/54 © 2005 Linden et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Screeningdistressdepressionanxietyhealth-related quality of lifesocial supportnormsreliabilityvalidity
Abstract Background: We are reporting on the development of a psychosocial screening tool for cancer patients. The tool was to be brief, at a relatively low reading level, capture psychological variables relevant to distress and health-related quality-of-life in cancer patients, possess good reliability and validity, and be free of copyright protection. Method: Item derivation is described, data on reliability and validity as well as norms are reported for three samples of cancer patients (n = 1057; n = 570, n = 101). Results: The resulting 21-item psychological screen for cancer (PSCAN) assesses perceived social support, desired social support, health-related quality-of-life, anxiety and depression. It has good psychometrics including high internal consistency (alpha averaging .83, and acceptable test-retest stability over 2 months (averaging r = .64). Validity has been established for content, construct and concurrent validity. Conclusion: PSCAN is considered ready for use as a screening tool and also for following changes in patient distress throughout the cancer care trajectory. It is freely available to all interested nonprofit users.
Background Cancer is now the leading cause of early death in Canada http://www.bccancer.bc.ca. A diagnosis of cancer is very emotionally threatening, may provoke anxiety or depression, and is difficult to live with because all aspects of life are overshadowed by the typical prognostic uncertainty [1-3]. Nevertheless, there is great variability in how patients respond to the diagnosis and this may be partly
explained by the nature and quality of support that patients have, individual coping skills and by the meaning that they can learn to assign to this threat [
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