Cultural Adaptation and Validation of Turkish Version of the Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients (t-SNAP) Scale in Patients With Cancer

Abstract

BackgroundThe patients may attribute different meanings to diseases and develop various coping mechanisms to cope with them depending on the geography and cultures. In this respect, spirituality is an important dimension that patients frequently refer to in chronic and life-threatening diseases such as cancer. In the Turkiye, the availability of measurement tools designed to assess patients' spiritual needs remains limited. This study aimed to adapt the The Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients scale into Turkish and examine its psychometric properties.MethodsThe scale adaptation process involved the following steps: (1) translation and cross-cultural adaptation and (2) psychometric evaluation, including factor analysis, reliability analysis, and inter-item correlation assessment. 453 patients with cancer were included in the study. The data were collected in 2023. The participants were patients with cancer who were receiving outpatient and inpatient treatment in the medical oncology and hematology clinics of three university hospitals in Turkiye. Data collection tools included the Patient Information Form and the Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients scale. Validity was examined through content and structural validity assessments, while reliability was measured using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability.ResultsThe content validity index of the T-SNAP was calculated as 80.54%. The exploratory factor analysis indicated 3 factors (psychosocial needs, spiritual needs, religious needs) with 23 items. The combined three factors accounted for 66.92% of the total variance. The factor loadings ranged from 0.43 to 0.96. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be 0.95, and the test-retest reliability score was 0.96.ConclusionsThe findings suggest that the T-SNAP scale is a reliable and valid tool for assessing the spiritual needs of patients in Turkiye.