Evaluation of Psychometric Features of Persian Version of Spiritual Needs Questionnaire in Cancer Patients

Spirituality and spiritual activities are the important sources of coping with chronic illnesses in order to maintain and enhance the patientʼs self-esteem, create a sense of purposefulness, increase psychological well-being and hopefulness. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric features of the Persian version of the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire in cancer patients.

This descriptive survey study was carried out on a total of 100 cancer patients in Guilan who were selected from charities and cancer patient funding associations through convenience sampling. In this study, factor analysis for principal components was used to evaluate the validity of the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire. In addition, the Cronbachʼs alpha was employed to assess the reliability of the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire.

The results of factor analysis showed that by turning to the varimax method, the four components, including spiritual factors, internal peace, and existential and active presentations, were confirmed. Moreover, it was clear that the reliability of the whole questionnaire and subscales was high.

The obtained results revealed that the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire had good validity and reliability and could be an appropriate tool for research in the spiritual domain.