Developing an emotional distress item      bank for cancer patients.
Emotional distress is common among cancer patients during and after treatment. Many instruments have been used to measure emotional distress; however, none of them has emerged as a standard. Although the diversity of instruments has some merit, the lack of a common measure limits our ability to compare studies. This paper describes how we constructed a 46-item emotional distress bank. Using expert judgment, we selected a pool of items with emotional content from this six-instrument set. Rasch rating scale analysis helped us identify a set of general distress items with good model fit and a measurement gap causing floor effects. Additional items were written to augment the measure where found deficient. The resulting set of items reflects a spectrum of positive and negative affect. The measure demonstrated excellent reliability (person separation reliability = .96) and a wide range of emotional distress and was able to distinguish among levels of disease severity.
Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. a-heinemann@northwestern.edu
Allen W
AW
Heinemann
Rita K
RK
Bode
Sarah
S
Rosenbloom
David
D
Cella
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results