Journal of Advanced Nursing
Journal of Advanced Nursing
5 years ago

The Female Self-Advocacy in Cancer Survivorship Scale: A Validation Study

Teresa L. Hagan, Margaret Q. Rosenzweig, Kristin Zorn, Susan M. Cohen, Clement A. Stone, Heidi S. Donovan
Aim To develop and psychometrically test the validity of the Female Self-Advocacy in Cancer Survivorship Scale. Background Female cancer survivors need to self-advocate to overcome challenges associated with cancer yet no valid measure of self-advocacy exists. Design Instrument development. Mixed-mode cross-sectional survey design. Participants We recruited adult females (18+ years) (N=317) with a history of invasive cancer from local and national tumor registries and advocacy organizations to complete online or paper questionnaires. Methods Between July 2014 and March 2015 to evaluate the construct validity based on evidence of the scale's: (1) internal structure consistent with the underlying model of self-advocacy; (2) sensitivity to differences between groups known to differ in self-advocacy skills; (3) relationships between self-advocacy and key potential predictors (openness and conscientiousness; information engagement; social support) and outcomes (symptom burden and health care utilization); (4) relationships between self-advocacy and related concepts (patient activation; self-advocacy within another patient population); and (5) relationships between self-advocacy and criterion measures. Analyses included an exploratory factor analysis, t-tests, and bi-variate correlations using validated, reliable measures for constructs. Results Evidence from all five hypotheses supported the construct validity of the Female Self-Advocacy in Cancer Survivorship Scale. The factor analysis confirmed the three underlying dimensions of self-advocacy resulting in a 20-item measure with strong internal consistency that explained almost half of response variance. Conclusion The Female Self-Advocacy in Cancer Survivorship Scale is a valid, reliable measure of how well adult female cancer survivors can get their needs met in the face of adversity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1111/jan.13498

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.