title: The revised Sign and Symptom Check-List for HIV (SSC-HIVrev).
abstract: Symptom management for persons living with HIV/AIDS is recognized as an extremely important component of care management. This article reports on the continuing validation of the revised Sign and Symptom Check-List for Persons With HIV Disease (SSC-HIVrev). The initial validation study used a combined sample of 933 HIV-positive persons and concluded that the validity and reliability of the instrument were adequate to measure patients' self-report of HIV-related signs and symptoms. The revised scale includes items to measure gynecological-related symptoms and the impact of lipodystrophy (body fat redistribution) due to antiretroviral therapy on patients' symptom experience. The scale structure (factor analysis) and reliability estimates were recalculated in a new sample of 372 HIV-positive persons. Based on reviewing the clusters of items, factor loadings, reliability estimates, and clinical interpretability, an 11-factor solution was determined that explained 73.3% of the variance. Of the retained factors, 4 had eigenvalues less than 1, yet they explained significant amounts of variance in the rotated sums of squares loading (5.0%, 4.3%, 4.3%, and 3.6%, respectively), the reliability estimates were good, and the factors had clinical meaning. The revised scale (SSC-HIVrev) has three parts: Part 1 consists of 45 items that clustered into 11 factor scores along with a total score, with reliability estimates ranging from .76 to .91; Part 2 consists of 19 HIV-related symptoms that do not cluster into factor scores but may be of interest from a clinical perspective; and Part 3 consists of 8 items related to gynecological symptoms for women. These 8 items were submitted to a principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation (n = 118 HIV-positive women), and a 1-factor solution explained 71.8% of the variance, with a reliability estimate of .94. The psychometric properties of the SSC-HIVrev are presented.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, USA.
authors.forename: W L
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Holzemer
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hudson
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Kirksey
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hamilton
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bakken
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000451:nursing* / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*