title: Psychometric properties of the Persian version of the self- assessed support needs questionnaire for breast cancer cases.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  It has been found that support given to women with breast cancer has a positive effect upon their reactions to the illness and may even prolong their survival. Perceived support needs assessment in breast cancer women could be considered as a necessary part of nursing function.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the self-assessed support needs (SASN) questionnaire into Persian language and to investigate its psychometric properties.
  
  
  METHODS
  After forward-backward translation of the questionnaire and making appropriate changes, we selected 160 women with breast cancer as our study sample. The psychometric properties of the SASN, including its internal consistency, test retest reliability, and construct validity were evaluated through the known-groups technique.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The calculated Kaiser Meyer Olkin was 0.756, indicating that the sample was sufficiently large to perform a satisfactory factor analysis. The six factors all together explained 50.7% of the variance; the first factor (diagnosing) explaining the biggest part of variance (10.9). Internal consistency reliability was 0.83 for the whole scale and the stability of test was 0.78. For the first factor, Cronbach's alpha was 0.90 and factor loadings of scale's items were found to deal with diagnosis subscale. The domains described patients' diagnosis, treatment, support, femininity and body image, family and friends and information.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The reliability and validity of the adapted version of the SASN was shown to be satisfactory. Thus, it can be used to investigate self-assessed support needs of Iranian women suffering from breast cancer since the SASN is a multi-domain scale.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing and Midwifery, Iran university of medical sciences, Tehran, Iran E-mail : sjoolai@tums.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Fatemeh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ghaffari
authors.forename: Mahboobeh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shali
authors.forename: Mahnaz
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shoghi
authors.forename: Soodabeh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Joolaee
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001828:Body Image; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012944:Social Support; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014175:Translating; D055815:Young Adult