Psychometric properties of the Persian version of Brief Religious Coping Scale in breast cancer patients

Abstract

Background: Religious coping is a known predictor of health outcomes in cancer patients specially in religious cultures such as Iran. Validated scales are needed to assess religious coping in further studies. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the brief religious coping (brief RCOPE) scale among breast cancer patients. Methods: The 'forward-backward' procedure was applied to translate the questionnaire from English into Persian. 224 breast cancer patients completed brief RCOPE and Facit-Sp (spiritual well-being Scale) since October 2014 to may 2015. Validity was assessed using face, content, convergent validity, and exploratory factor analysis. The Cronbach's alpha and inter-item correlations were used to assess reliability of the brief RCOPE. Findings: The mean age of patients was 47.08 (SD=9.08) years. The results of factor analysis indicated a two-factor solution for the questionnaire that jointly accounted for 60.1% of the variance observed. Factor loadings of the positive subscale using varimax rotations ranged from .71 to .81 and the negative subscale ranged from .56 to .79, respectively. Further analyses with Facit-Sp scale showed that the two subscales had good convergent validity. All inter-item and item-to-total correlations for each subscale were above the recommended criteria of .30. The brief RCOPE and both the subscales, positive and negative, had Cronbach’s alphas of .76, .85 and .81, indicating a good range of reliability. Discussion: The findings indicated that the Persian Brief RCOPE scale is reliable and valid for measuring religious coping among breast cancer patients and could be used in further studies in Iran.