A contribution to the validation of the Needs Evaluation Questionnaire (NEQ): a study in the Italian context

An accurate assessment of patients' needs is a core point in improving treatment adherence, satisfaction, and quality of life of care receivers. The Needs Evaluation Questionnaire (NEQ) is a practical and short instrument designed to record hospitalized patients' necessities. The present paper is a contribution to its factorial definition, useful in enhancing the understanding of NEQ psychometric properties and in supporting its use in research as well as in current practice.

Six hundred consecutive hospitalized cancer patients completed the NEQ together with a form for the collection of personal identification and clinical data. The initial sample was randomly split into two subsamples, and we then conducted: (1) an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on Subsample 1; (2) a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the factor structure resulting from EFA on Subsample 2; (3) a comparison between the factor structure resulting from CFA and a unidimensional factor solution.

EFA revealed the presence of five factors (i.e. informative needs, needs related to assistance/care, relational needs, needs for psychoemotional support, and material needs) explaining a total of 50.5% of the variance. CFA confirmed the validity of the correlated five-factor solution emerging from EFA, demonstrating how the theoretical model provided a good fit to the observed data. Finally, we demonstrated that the five-factor solution was more appropriate in the reconstruction of the observed data than the unidimensional factor solution. According to the present data and despite the limitations raised, using NEQ as a five-factor questionnaire is functional and recommendable.