A questionnaire assessing women's care needs related to gynaecological cancer screening: development of the GCSCNS.

OBJECTIVE

To identify women's care needs concerning cancer screening and to develop an instrument suitable for measuring them--the Gynaecological Cancer Screening Care Needs Scale (GCSCNS). We hypothesized that it is possible: (a) to explore care needs and to develop reliable subscales of them, (b) to rank these needs in order of importance, and (c) to detect determinants of these needs (age, social status, marital status, health locus of control) and these need scores.

STUDY DESIGN

A questionnaire was developed based on the relevant literature, interviews conducted with gynaecological patients, and a consultation with 18 experts. The questionnaire listed 58 items addressed to physicians which deal with information and support needs during gynaecological cancer screening. Subjects rated the importance of each item using a five-point scale (from 1=very important, to 5=not important). The questionnaire also asked for patients' demographic information and their locus of control. It was distributed to 1000 female patients in 10 gynaecological practices in 3 federal states of Germany as an exploratory multi-centric cross-sectional study. A total of 961 women completed the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze patients' demographic variables. With a principal component analysis (PCA, Varimax rotation), three care needs subscales were generated which then led to the GCSCNS scales.

RESULTS

The dimensions of patients' care needs can be described on three subscales: "Need for Information" (GCSCNS-I), "Need for Respect and Empathy during the physical examination" (GCSCNS-RE), "Need for Caring and Availability of the doctor" (GCSCNS-CA). Internal consistencies varied between good and very good (Cronbach's alpha .80-.89). Data indicate that it is possible to rank the female care needs in order of importance and that they are dependent on age and social status, but not on marital status and locus of control regarding health and disease.

CONCLUSION

Because there is no comparable research available on this topic, we developed an instrument for measuring female care needs related to gynaecological cancer screening. The results give gynaecologists the opportunity to better fulfil their patients' wishes and needs and perhaps increase participation in gynaecological cancer screening.