Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the FACIT-PAL Quality of Life Instrument

Context: The accurate measurement of quality of life (QoL) among people with chronic and incurable illnesses is essential for evaluating service delivery, understanding the impact of illness and treatment effects, and testing intervention effectiveness. Palliative care interventions are relatively new in Turkey; therefore, it is important that reliable and valid QoL instruments are available to evaluate palliative care effectiveness in Turkish speakers. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to translate, linguistically validate, and determine the psychometric properties of the newly translated Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Palliative Care (FACIT-Pal) scale (FACIT-Pal-TR) for Turkish-speaking cancer patients. Methods: We used standard multilingual translation and validation methods for the initial translation of the FACIT-Pal-TR and then assessed the psychometric properties of reliability and validity of the translated scale. We used the Karnofsky Performance Scale and Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale to assess concurrent and construct validity. Results: A convenience sample of 232 cancer patients participated in this study. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of FACIT-Pal-TR was 0.932 (between 0.732 and 0.860 for subscales). There was a statistically significant relationship between test and retest scores (r = 0.877, P < 0.001). The factor loadings of FACIT-Pal-TR were between 0.205 and 0.815. FACIT-Pal-TR construct validity was acceptable with 45 items and five subscales. There were statistically significant relationships between FACIT-Pal-TR scores and Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (P < 0.001) and Karnofsky Performance Scale (r = 0.656; P < 0.001) scores. Conclusions: The FACIT-Pal-TR demonstrates strong reliability and validity for evaluating palliative care–specific QoL in Turkish cancer patients.