PurposeTo investigate the impact of personal goal disturbance after cancer diagnosis on well-being over time, and a possible moderating role of goal adjustment tendencies and actual goal adjustment strategies.MethodsParticipants (n = 186) were interviewed three times: within a month, 7 months (treatment period), and 18 months (follow-up period) after being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Participants were asked to freely mention three to ten personal goals. Goal disturbance was assessed by the patients’ ratings of the amount of hindrance experienced in goal achievement. Goal adjustment tendencies were assessed using the Goal Disengagement and Re-engagement Scale and actual goal adjustment (i.e. goal flexibility) by the number of goal adjustment strategies used. Outcome measures were overall quality of life and emotional functioning, assessed with the cancer-specific EORTC QLQ-C30.ResultsHierarchical regression analyses showed that goal disturbance predicted well-being over both the treatment and the follow-up period. Additionally, the negative effect of goal disturbance on well-being was less for patients who scored higher on goal disengagement and not significant for patients who were more flexible in their use of actual goal adjustment strategies.ConclusionsThe present study is the first to test the theoretical assumption that goal adjustment is beneficial after goal disturbance. Whereas these findings need to be confirmed in future research, the possibly beneficial role of goal disengagement and actual goal adjustment strategies can be used for psychological interventions.

The findings show that cancer patients use different goal adjustment strategies and, interestingly, that the use of specific strategies depended on the period after diagnosis but not on illness variables.

The results of this study support the assumption that cancer patients adjust their goals to changing circumstances and additionally show how patients adjust their goals to their illness. Moreover, we demonstrate that illness variables impact on goal change.