Measuring spiritual well-being in people with cancer: The functional assessment of chronic illness therapy—spiritual well-being scale (FACIT-Sp)

Abstract

A significant relation between religion and better health has been demonstrated in a variety of healthy and patient populations. In the past several years, there has been a focus on the role of spirituality, as distinctfrom religion, in health promotion and coping with illness. Despite the growing interest, there remains a dearth of well-validated, psychometrically sound instruments to measure aspects of spirituality. In this article we report on the development and testing of a measure of spiritual well-being, the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp), within two samples of cancer patients. The instrument comprises two subscales--one measuring a sense of meaning and peace and the other assessing the role offaith in illness. A total score for spiritual well-being is also produced. Study 1 demonstrates good internal consistency reliability and a significant relation with quality of life in a large, multiethnic sample. Study 2 examines convergent validity with 5 other measures of religion and spirituality in a sample of individuals with mixed early stage and metastatic cancer diagnoses. Results of the two studies demonstrate that the FACIT-Sp is a psychometrically sound measure of spiritual well-being for people with cancer and other chronic illnesses.

Assessment of spiritual suffering in the cancer context: A systematic literature review

“…Some 20 scales were identified that measured meaning: the Chinese Cancer Coherence Scale (CCCS) (Chan et al, 2007); the Constructed Meaning Scale (Fife, 1995); the meaning/peace subscale of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy -Spiritual Well-Being Scale (FACIT-Sp) (Canada et al, 2008;Murphy et al, 2010;Peterman et al, 2002); the Illness Cognitions Questionnaire (ICQ) (Evers et al, 2001); the Internal Coherence Scale (ICS) (Kroz et al, 2009); the Life Attitude Profile (LAP)/ Life Attitude Profile -Revised (LAP -R) (Reker, 1992;Reker & Peacock, 1981); the Life Evaluation Questionnaire (LEQ) (Salmon et al, 1996); the Meaning in Life questions (including the Benefit Finding Scale [BFS]) used by Tomich and Helgeson (2002); the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) (Steger et al, 2006); the Meaning in Life Scale (MILS) (Jim et al, 2006); the Meaning in Suffering Test (MIST) (Starck, 1983); the Perceived Meanings of Cancer Pain Inventory (PMCPI) (Chen, 1999); the Personal Meaning Profile (PMP) (Wong, 1998); the Positive Meaning and Vulnerability Scale (Bower et al, 2005); the Purpose in Life (PIL) Test (Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1964); the Purposelessness, Understimulation, and Boredom (PUB) Scale (Passik et al, 2003); the Schedule for Meaning in Life Evaluation (SMiLE) (Fegg et al, 2008); the Sense of Coherence (SOC) Scale (Antonovsky, 1993); the Sources of Meaning Profile (SOMP)/Sources of Meaning Profile -Revised (SOMP -R) (Reker, 1996); and the World Assumptions Scale (Janoff-Bulman, 1989). The optimal measure of meaning will vary depending on the purpose and context of the assessment.…”

Having a sibling as donor: Patients' experiences immediately before allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

“…The questionnaires used to measure patient QoL were the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy -Bone Marrow Transplantation scale (FACT-BMT), version 4 (Cella et al, 1993;McQuellon et al, 1997) and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy -the Spiritual Well-being scale (FACITSp), version 4 (Peterman et al, 2002) (Appendix I). The FACIT measurement system is a collection of QoL questionnaires with a core questionnaire, Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy -General (FACT-G), with a number of supplementary subscales specific to tumour type, treatment or condition.…”

“…All 23 items in this subscale were included in the questionnaire administered to the patients, but for scoring and analysis the subscale was limited to 10 of the items in accordance with the FACIT guidelines (Cella, 1997). The FACIT-Sp, which is an optional subscale, assesses the patients' spiritual well-being, and comprises 12 items (Peterman et al, 2002). It includes items that deal with sense of meaning and peace and the role of faith in illness, and it produces a total score for spiritual well-being.…”

“…Their answers are then scored according to scale-specific guidelines (Cella, 1997). A higher score indicates better QoL (McQuellon et al, 1997;Peterman et al, 2002). Validated Swedish translations of the ques-tionnaires (Bonomi et al, 1996) were acquired from FACIT for use in the present study.…”

“…The FACT-BMT, version 4 (Cella et al, 1993;McQuellon et al, 1997) and the FACIT-Sp (Appendix I), version 4 (Peterman et al, 2002) were used to measure QoL. FACT-BMT was chosen as it is a frequently used and recommended instrument in studies of QoL in patients undergoing HSCT with demonstrated reliability and validity (Kopp et al, 2000;McQuellon et al, 1997).…”