RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL-FATIGUE-INVENTORY (MFI-20) AND THE RHOTEN-FATIGUE-SCALE AMONG RURAL CANCER OUTPATIENTS

Cancer patients typically experience fatigue while undergoing treatmen t for their disease. This study was an effort to identify, a reliable and economical measure of fatigue. In particular, scores on the five s ubscales of the Multi-dimensional Fatigue Inventory, (MFI-20) were ana lyzed for internal consistency and then col-related with scores on the Rhoten Fatigue Inventory to establish a measure of validity. Moderate -to-high Cronbach alphas coefficients were established for the General Fatigue subscale of the MFI-20 using a sample of 97 rural oncology ou tpatients (1). Partial associations with the Rhoten Fatigue Scale lend evidence to the validity of the MFI-20 measures.