Turkish adaptation of the spiritual distress scale; validity and reliability study

This work; This is a methodological study planned to determine the validity and reliability of the 'Spiritual Distress Scale' developed by Ku et al. The study was conducted with 293 oncology patients who applied to Başkent University Ankara Hospital between January 2022 and December 2022, met the criteria for participation in the study and voluntarily accepted to participate in the study. 'Personal Information Form', 'Spiritual Well-Being Scale' and 'Spiritual Distress Scale' were used to collect research data. In order to evaluate the validity of the scale, validity analyzes of "language", "scope", "appearance" and "structure" were used. The mean score of the Spiritual Distress Scale was 48.12 ± 7.84; Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated as 0.87. On the other hand, the mean score of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale used as a parallel form was calculated as 109.76 ± 12.42. As a result of the confirmatory factor analysis performed to confirm the original structure of the scale, the fit index scores were within acceptable limits, the exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the factor structure of Turkish language and culture and a six-factor structure emerged. As a result of the study, it was found that cancer patients had a high level of spiritual distress. In the study, it was found that the patients' age, gender, marital status, educational status, working life, length of hospital stay, diagnosed disease and time of diagnosis did not have a significant effect on their spiritual distress. Results; It has shown that the Spiritual Distress Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used in Turkish society with its 27 items and six sub-dimensions. The measurement tool is recommended to be used to determine the spiritual distress levels of cancer patients. Keywords: spiritual distress, spiritual well-being, cancer, validity and reliability