A prevalence and psychometric study on fear of cancer in women with abnormal cervical cytology undergoing colposcopy
Fatma Özlem Üner, Öznur Körükcü
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine the levels of fear of cancer in women who were referred for colposcopy and to determine validity and reliability of the Cancer Worry Scale (CWS) in gynaecology patients. METHODS: The study was conducted between March-November 2017 with 200 women at the Gynaecologic Oncology Clinic at Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey. Reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analyzes, and multidimensional sum-score estimation were used for psychometric analyzes. One-way ANOVA and independent samples t-test were also used. RESULTS: Total score for the CWS of the participants was determined as 20.05 ± 7.87 in colposcopy patients. Marital status, information about the Papanicolaou (Pap) smear test and colposcopy, and fear of colposcopy were strongly associated with fear of cancer. We determined that a one-factor structure emerged for the scale and that the total contribution of this factor to the explained variance was 53.35%. CFA was applied to obtain additional evidence of structural validity in line with the scores obtained from the scale. The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.87. CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealed that levels of fear of cancer were high in women who were referred for colposcopy. Furthermore, the CWS was determined as a valid and reliable tool to measure the fear of cancer in women undergoing cervical screening/follow-up for abnormal cytology.