Adaptation of an instrument to measure the informational needs of men withprostate cancer

Aim of the study. The aim of this study is to adapt an instrument suitable for assessment of the informational needs of men with prostate cancer. Background. In recent years prostate cancer has become an important public health problem world-wide with considerable social and economic consequence s. It is reported that it is the most common cancer affecting British men, with an average lifetime risk of occurrence of one in twelve. Design/methods. Methodological research was conducted to develop an instrum ent to assess the informational needs of men with prostate cancer on hormon al manipulation therapy (HMT) regarding their disease and treatment. The To ronto Informational Needs Questionnaire (TINQ-BC) (Galloway et al. 1997) wa s modified for use with this client group and was applied to a sample of 90 men generated from three urology centres in Northern Ireland. Results/findings. Construct and content validity of the instrument was esta blished. Internal consistency reliability using Cronbach's alpha was calcul ated and found to be satisfactory (0.92). Using confirmatory factor analysi s, factor loadings ranging from 0.37 to 0.90 were obtained and considered s atisfactory. The subsections of the TINQ-BC categorized as Disease, Investi gative tests, Treatment, Psychosocial and Physical needs were confirmed as individual factors. These results indicate that this instrument can be vali dly applied to this client group. As the instrument was initially developed in Canada and successfully used in the United Kingdom (UK), it is suggeste d that this instrument also has the potential for cross-cultural applicatio n. It has the potential to be used as a clinical reference instrument to as sess the informational needs of this patient group. Health care professiona ls must be aware of the domains of information that these men perceive impo rtant so that educational interventions can be accurately and appropriately planned.