Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Connectedness with Health Care Providers Scale for Adolescents and...

Purposes of this study were to (1) develop an instrument of connectedness with health care providers (HCPs) for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer (ages 13 to 21 years); (2) evaluate the content validity of the instrument through expert panels; (3) assess the dimensionality of the instrument; (4) evaluate the internal consistency reliability of the instrument; and (5) evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of the instrument through hypothesis testing. The Connectedness with HCPs Scale (C-HCPS) was developed and evaluated in two phases. Phase I involved generating items, having two expert panels (AYAs and clinicians; n = 13) evaluate the items for content validity, and pretesting the instrument before pilot testing (n = 6). In phase II, the psychometric properties of the instrument (dimensionality, internal consistency reliability, and convergent/discriminant validity) were evaluated (n = 101). The initial exploratory factor analysis revealed that the items separated into two separate instruments. In addition to the C-HCPS, a Disconnectedness with HCPs Scale (D-HCPS) was revealed. The C-HCPS contains 35 items and the D-HCPS contains 11 items. Exploratory factor analysis suggested a five-factor solution for the C-HCPS and a two-factor solution for the D-HCPS. Internal consistency reliability of the C-HCPS and D-HCPS was 0.964 and 0.881, respectively. Good evidence of convergent and discriminant validity was demonstrated through hypothesis testing. Findings indicate that the C-HCPS and D-HCPS are both reliable instruments with good evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Further exploration of these instruments using confirmatory factor analysis in a larger sample is needed.