Feasibility and Acceptability of the Psychological Distress Profile for Evaluating Distress Among Cancer Patients

Screening tools commonly used for psychological distress among cancer patients have high rates of false positives, thus warranting a brief, detailed screening measure of distress. This study assessed the feasibility, acceptability, reliability, and validity of the Psychological Distress Profile (PDP) in an online sample of cancer patients. One hundred and seventy-four participants with a self-reported diagnosis of cancer were included in this study. Participants completed the study via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Results yielded high ratings of acceptability, ease of completion, and willingness to complete the PDP. The PDP demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .94). The PDP depression subscale had large positive correlations with the PDP hopelessness subscale (r = .84, p < .001), PHQ-9 (r = .67, p < .001), and CES-D (r = .67, p < .001). The PDP anxiety subscale had large positive correlations with the PROMIS Emotional Distress-Anxiety-Short Form (r = .68, p < .001) and GAD-7 (r = .70, p < .001). Finally, the PDP anger subscale had a large positive correlation with the PROMIS Emotional Distress-Anger-Short Form (r = .76, p < .001). The mean PDP total score (N = 174) was 69.0 (sd = 16.4). The PDP total score demonstrated a small, significant positive correlation with the DT (r = .21, p = .005) and is likely more sensitive to distress associated with depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and anger. The PDP emerges as a theory-driven distress assessment tool for use with cancer patients.