Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
Department of General and Interventional Cardiology, University Heart Center Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 14;15(10):e0240619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240619. eCollection 2020.
A cancer disease can affect the satisfaction with the physical appearance, so that the standardized assessment of the body image is important in cancer patients. The German version of the Self-Image Scale is a self-report measure that uses two subscales to assess appearance satisfaction (self-acceptance) and perceptions of partners' acceptance of their appearance (partner-acceptance). The present study aimed to validate the Self-Image Scale's two-factor structure in a sample of cancer patients with a variety of different diagnoses to further increase its utility.
Confirmatory factor analysis methods were used to examine the two-factor model in a sample of cancer patients (N = 278). Scale reliability and validity were then assessed through internal consistency measures and correlations with external criteria such as depressiveness, anxiety, distress, and relationship satisfaction.
The proposed factor structure was supported by the results and the internal consistencies were good with α = .83 for the self-acceptance scale and α = .88 for the partner-acceptance scale while additional correlations with external criteria were observed as expected.
The results support the use of the German version of the Self-Image Scale in cancer patients in general. Future research directions include validation across further entities of cancer, the in-depth investigation of sex differences, and research in other diseases that might impact body image.
癌症疾病会影响对身体外观的满意度，因此对癌症患者进行身体形象的标准化评估非常重要。自我形象量表的德文版是一种自我报告的测量工具，使用两个分量表来评估外观满意度（自我接纳）和对伴侣对自己外表的接受程度的感知（伴侣接纳）。本研究旨在通过对患有多种不同诊断的癌症患者的样本进行验证，进一步增加其效用，以验证自我形象量表的两因素结构。
使用验证性因子分析方法对癌症患者样本（N=278）进行检验。然后通过内部一致性测量和与外部标准（如抑郁、焦虑、痛苦和关系满意度）的相关性来评估量表的信度和效度。
结果支持提出的因素结构，自我接纳量表的内部一致性良好，α值为.83，而伴侣接纳量表的α值为.88，同时观察到与外部标准的额外相关性，这与预期相符。
结果支持在一般癌症患者中使用自我形象量表的德文版。未来的研究方向包括在更多的癌症实体中进行验证，深入研究性别差异，以及在可能影响身体形象的其他疾病中进行研究。
