Construction and Validation of Treatment Information Literacy Acquisition Questionnaire for Patients with Cancer

Treatment information literacy addresses the patients’ therapeutic information during the treatment process, which should be properly identified and directed. The purpose of study was to construct and validate treatment information literacy acquisition questionnaire for patients with cancer. The study population in this survey research was 570 patients with cancer undergoing treatment at Omid hospital in Mashhad, Iran. The sample consisted of 227 patients who were selected via stratified random sampling. The used tool was a researcher-made treatment information literacy questionnaire which was distributed in June 2017. Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and Content Validity Index (CVI) were used to determine the content validity while the Bartlett sample spheroid test was used for the structure validity. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability of the designed questionnaire. Among 40 items of the questionnaire, 37 items were accepted by CVR. Furthermore, the score of the CVI was 0.76 which indicated the validity of the tool. The significance of the Brutel test was 8250.258d and the significance level was 0.001, which indicated that the sample size was suitable for performing factor analysis of patient treatment information literacy components. The results of factor analysis showed that the prepared questionnaire was multidimensional, and had 6 components which according to percentage of variance and special value included drugs, treatment methods, nutrition, experiments, treatment costs, and sport (exercise). The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for all components of the questionnaire was higher than 0.7 in the pretest and final test, which indicated the reliability of the tool. This questionnaire helps medical teams in charge of patients with cancer to recognize the information needs of their patients in various components of treatment information literacy, and to meet their information needs