A Chinese version of a Likert-type death anxiety scale for colorectal cancer patients

• Main Authors: Hong Yang, Jie Zhang, Yuhan Lu, Ming Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2016-12-01
• Series: International Journal of Nursing Sciences
• Subjects: Colorectal cancer; Death anxiety; Likert-type scale
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352013216300126

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate and validate the performance of a Chinese version of a Likert-type death anxiety scale for colorectal cancer patients. Methods: This study assessed the death anxiety of 50 colorectal cancer patients, which were selected by convenience sampling method, by using the Chinese version of a Likert-type Templer death anxiety scale (CL-TDAS) on the first day of admission. Results: Most of the respondents finished the entire scale in 3–5 min, and the recovery rate was 94.0%. Cronbach's α indicated that the internal consistency was 0.821 for the complete 15 items, and the correlation between the CL-TDAS and the C-TDAS (non-Likert-type) was 0.79(P < 0.05). The structural validity of the CL-TDAS revealed that the scale items accounted for >63.78% of the total variability, and that the four-component structure of the data well fitted the model. The mean score of the CL-TDAS was 36.16 ± 9.99 (first day of admission). Conclusion: The CL-TDAS showed reliable performance and can thus be a promising instrument for evaluating the death anxiety of cancer patients. Death anxiety varied for different periods and different genders.