McConnell Mairead H, Miljanovski Melissa, Rodin Gary, O'Connor Mary-Frances
Department of Psychiatry, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Department of Supportive Care, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Palliat Support Care. 2024 Oct;22(5):1226-1231. doi: 10.1017/S1478951523001669.
Individuals with advanced cancer face the challenge of living meaningfully while also preparing for end of life. The ability to sustain this duality, called "double awareness," may reflect optimal psychological adaptation, but no psychometric scale exists to measure this construct.
The purpose of this study was to develop a novel scale to measure double awareness in patients living with advanced cancer.
Guided by best practices for scale development, this study addresses the first three of nine steps in instrument development, including domain clarification and item generation, establishment of content validity of the items, and pre-testing of the items with patients.
Instrument development resulted in a 41-item measure with two dimensions titled "life engagement" and "death contemplation." Items retained in the measure displayed face validity and were found to be both acceptable by patients and relevant to their lived experience.
The results of this scale development study will allow for full validation of the measure and future use in clinical and research settings. This novel measure of double awareness will have clinical utility and relevance in a variety of settings where patients with advanced cancer are treated.
晚期癌症患者面临着在有意义地生活的同时为生命终结做准备的挑战。维持这种被称为“双重意识”的二元性的能力可能反映了最佳的心理适应状态，但目前尚无用于测量这一概念的心理测量量表。
本研究旨在开发一种新型量表，用于测量晚期癌症患者的双重意识。
以量表开发的最佳实践为指导，本研究涵盖了量表开发九个步骤中的前三个步骤，包括领域澄清与条目生成、条目的内容效度确立以及对患者进行条目前测。
量表开发产生了一个包含41个条目的测量工具，有“生活投入”和“死亡思考”两个维度。保留在该测量工具中的条目显示出表面效度，并且被患者认为是可接受的且与他们的生活经历相关。
该量表开发研究的结果将有助于对该测量工具进行全面验证，并在未来用于临床和研究环境。这种新型的双重意识测量工具将在治疗晚期癌症患者的各种环境中具有临床实用性和相关性。
