Development of a Thai version of the neutropenia subscale for the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–Neutropenia questionnaire

Abstract

Background: There is a need for a validated translation of the neutropenia subscale (NS) of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–Neutropenia (FACT-N) questionnaire used to assess neutropenia-specific concerns and health-related quality of life for Thai patients receiving cancer chemotherapy. Objectives: To translate the NS of the FACT-N questionnaire into Thai and examine the psychometric properties of the Thai version. Methods: The 19 item NS was translated into Thai in accordance with the guidelines of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT) translation methodology. The psychometric properties of the translated version were then tested. We randomly selected 260 patient participants with hematological malignancies from four hospitals in Thailand. All participants completed the Thai version of FACT-N at the time of expected neutropenia (7–14 days after receiving chemotherapy). The Thai NS content validity was evaluated by a panel of 5 experts. The construct validity of the Thai NS was tested by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The internal consistency of the Thai NS was tested with Cronbach’s ? coefficients. Results: The Thai version of the NS was semantically equivalent to the English version. The content validity index was good at 0.95. The CFA of the Thai NS indicated acceptable construct validity. All 19 items on the Thai NS had significant estimated factor loadings (P Conclusions: The Thai NS, as part of FACT-N, is appropriate in terms of translation and psychometric properties for assessing specific neutropenia-related concerns in Thai patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy. Keywords: FACT-N, health-related quality of life, hematological malignancies, neutropenia subscale, scale translation, scale validation