Development And Validation Of The Hematological Malignancies Cancer-specific Supportive Care Needs Scale

Objectives The present study aims to: 1)explore the connotation of Specific Supportive Care Needs for patients with Hematologic Malignancies;2)The development of the hematological malignancies Cancer-specific supportive care needs scale(Specific Supportive Care Needs Scale-Hematologic Malignancies,hereinafter referred to as SSCNS-HM)and evaluate the reliability and validity by using the standard measurement development methods,and provided scientific assessment tools for clinical evaluation.Methods The first stage: the item pool was established(October,2016~April,2017)This study is based on the Supportive care framework and Nursing Professional Social Support Needs Scale(hereinafter referred to as NPSSNS)which was designed by our team.The primary item pool was designed based on literature review,semi-structured interview and group meeting.We recruited seven doctors and nurse,26 patients to take part in our in-depth interview by using purposive sampling,and explore the contents of Specific Supportive Care Needs for patients with Hematologic Malignancies from the point of view of medical staff and patients.Interviews were coded and analyzed,then the item pool was established.The second part: the formation of the first version(May 2017)Six medical and nursing experts relevant to Hematologic Malignancies from the tertiary hospitals and one expert at instrument development were invited for evaluating the content validity.Then the item-level content validity index and the average of all I-CVIs of the scale were calculated.The items were selected and modified according to the result of expert content validity evaluation.The third stage: the scale for measuring version was formulated(May 2017)21 patients(7 patients with leukemia,lymphoma and multiple myeloma)with hematological cancers from the hematological departments of third-grade class-A hospitals of Anhui province were selected for pretest by using purposive sampling,and the scale for measuring version was formulated.The fourth stage:clinical testing and the formation of the final version(June,2017~September,2017)A convenience sample of 420 hematological malignancy patients were enrolled to complete the scales and 412 valid questionnaires were used for analysis.Items were selected by using the correlation coefficient method,t test,Cronbach's ? coefficient,CV methods and factorial analysis.reliability was tested using internal consistency reliability and split-half reliability.Validity analysis was examined by converge and discrimination validity.The convergent validity was evaluated by examining the correlation with the Nursing Professional Social Support Need Scale(hereinafter referred to as NPSSNS),The Chinese version European organization for research and treatment of cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30(hereinafter referred to as QLQ-C30)and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale(hereinafter referred to as HADS).The Discriminant validity were evaluated by comparing the scores of supportive care needs among patients with different time from diagnosis and different age groups.Then the clinical application version of SSCNS-HM was developed.results The final scale contained 51 items and the Cronbach's ? coefficient of scale was 0.966,the split-half reliability of scale was 0.793.The item-level content validity index(I-CVI)was 0.86 ~1.00 and the Sale-CVI / average(S-CVI / Ave)was 0.973.Convergent validity analysis showed that the score of SSCNS-HM was correlated with NPSSNS,the HADS and the QLQ-C30(r=0.102~0.719,P=0.000~0.039).Discrimination validity analysis showed that there were statistically significant differences in scores of patients with different characteristics of time from diagnosis(P<0.001).The scores of patients who had been diagnosed less than 1 month higher than those of patients with higher month.Also,there were significant differences in scores of patients with different age groups(P<0.05).The scores in the age group less than 40 years were higher than those in other age groups.Conclusion this study has developed SSCNS-HM which was a single dimension module and contained 51 items.The Scale has a good psychometric property and can be used to assess the supportive care needs among patients with hematological cancers in china.