title: Measurement of fatigue in people with cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the quality of existing instruments measuring cancer-related fatigue (CRF).
  
  
  METHODS
  Nursing and medical literature.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although fatigue is highly prevalent among patients with cancer and adversely affects their quality of life, CRF often is unrecognized and untreated. The instruments available to measure CRF have numerous limitations. Many have been generated from investigators' observations, not actual experiences described by patients. Others operationalize different definitions of fatigue or differ in dimensionality, which leads to limited reliability and validity testing.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  All of the instruments in this review need further study of their psychometric properties. Qualitative studies of CRF from the patients' perspective are needed to develop better instruments.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Nurses need to increase their knowledge of assessing CRF to intervene and improve the quality of life for patients with cancer.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing at Saint Louis University in MO, USA. wuh@slu.edu
authors.forename: H S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McSweeney
mesh_terms: D005221:Fatigue; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000451:nursing* / Q000523:psychology*; D015399:Nursing Research; D009859:Oncology Nursing; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*