Development And Exploration Of Fatigue Assessment Scale For Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective:To develop a ordinary and practical instrument for appraise fatigue in patients with rheumatoid arthritis(RA)and to test its reliability and validity,furnishing disinterested tools and testimony for clinical evaluation and management of fatigue in RA patients.Methods:The basic framework,content validity index,and reliability testing index of the fatigue scale for RA patients were determined through document retrieval;Revise and improve the scale entries based on the results of semi structured interviews,and use the Likert 5-point scoring method to born the first draft of the RA patient fatigue scale;A survey was conducted on 120 RA patients who visited the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology in our hospital from April 2022 to September 2022.The survey tool is the first draft of the scale,the statistical software is SPSS 27.0software,and the project analysis is evaluated using the critical ratio method and the correlation coefficient method;Independent sample t-test was used to compare the differences between groups;Using reliability analysis to evaluate the reliability of the scale;Exploratory factor analysis was used to evaluate the validity of the scale to re screen items and form the final draft of the scale.Results:All together there are 120 participants in this work,embodying 29 males and 91 females,with an average age of 52.48 years.The formal scale has a total of 21 items,and four factors were extracted through exploratory factor analysis.The four dimensions were identified as life impact,social impact,motivation impact,and emotional impact.The total Cronbach’s α of the scale with a coefficient of 0.980,the Cronbach’s α of the four common factors is 0.957-0.976,the total Gertman half coefficient is 0.920,the half coefficient for the four dimensions is 0.868-0.917,and the retest reliability score is 0.965;The I-CVI is between 0.8-1,S-CVI is 0.971,KMO value is 0.939,Bartlett’s sphericity test is 4273.309,and the significance level is 0.000,indicating that the scale has good stability and is suitable for clinical application.The fatigue score of RA patients increases with the severity of the disease.Conclusion:The overall structure of the fatigue assessment scale for RA patients developed in this study is reasonable and reliable,and it is suitable for evaluating the fatigue degree and fatigue feeling of RA patients.The scale can better reflect the fatigue status of RA patients.The higher the fatigue score,the more severe the condition,providing a theoretical basis for subsequent clinical research.