PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SPIRITUAL WELLBEING SCALE IN ONCOLOGY NURSES

Spiritual wellbeing is one of health predictors that provide important information
about health care needs and help the individuals to cope with health crises. Psychometrics assessment and
evaluation of research instruments can help researchers to ensure their validity and reliability to be used in
different communities. The aim of this study was translation and evaluation of the psychometrics role of
Paloutzian and Ellison’s spiritual wellbeing according to Wild and colleagues (2005) method.
Materials & Methods: This study has an exploratory design that recruited 130 oncology nurses working
in 12 hospitals of Shahid Behesahti, Tehran, and Iran medical sciences universities by census method.
First the “Paloutzian and Ellisson spiritual wellbeing scale (1983) was translated and adapted based on
Wild and colleagues’ (2005) method. Then its content, face, criterion and construct validity as well as its
reliability was determined by using CVI, correlation coefficient, factor analysis, alpha chronbach and test
retest ways.
Results: By using CVI with 75% cut off point, no item was deleted from spiritual wellbeing scale.
Number 5 and 10 items had some ambiguity from participants’ point of view that we did some
modifications. Factor analysis results indicated that the scale had two domains. In order to obtain criterion
validity of scale, we used the Dealman and colleagues spirituality index of wellbeing as criterion
indicating that the two instruments correlations was r= 0/46. Chronbach alpha coefficient of spiritual
wellbeing and religious wellbeing subscales were α= 0/78 and α= 0/64 respectively. Reliability
coefficient was (r= 0/56) which was obtained by using test retest in two administrations of scale with 2
weeks interval.
Conclusion: Persian version of ‘Paloutzian and Ellisson’ spiritual wellbeing scale (1983) has a proper
validity and reliability in oncology nurses population. We suggest the application of it in other medical
and nursing studies.