Validity and Reliability of the Symptom-Management Self-Efficacy Scale for Breast Cancer Related to Chemotherapy

Abstract

Objective:Since breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancer types among women, it is very important for nurses to assess symptom-management and self-efficacy of patients during chemotherapy treatment. This study was carried out to examine the validity and reliability of the symptom-management self-efficacy scale for BC related to chemotherapy.Methods:The study sample of this methodological research consisted of 248 women receiving chemotherapy treatment due to breast cancer in a public hospital in İstanbul between November 2017 ans March 2018. Translation-back translation method was used to assess the language validity of the scale. Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin and Bartlett’s tests were applied to evaluate the sampling adequacy and the suitability of the data for factor analysis.Results:The content validity of the Turkish form was 0.912; Cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.905. The factor loads of all the items belonging to the scale were above 0.40, and explained variance for the scale was as follows; 16,284 for the problem-solving sub-dimension; 13,517 for the sub-dimension of managing problems in emotional and interpersonal relationships, and total explained variance of the scale was found to be 46,944. For this reason, no items were removed from the scale and the scale was accepted as having 3 sub-dimensions as it was in the original.Conclusion:Findings obtained from this study showed that the Turkish version of the scale was valid and reliable and could be used in research and clinical practice in Turkey.

Keywords

• validity-reliability
• breast cancer
• self-efficacy
• symptom management