Objective: This study intends to investigate the reliability, validity and patients’ perception towards the Malay Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS) and Malay McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire (MMQoL) in Terengganu cancer patients. Methods: It was conducted cross-sectionally in Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah (HSNZ), Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
recruiting 80 patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria. Socio-demographic data was analyzed descriptively and presented as frequencies. To examine patients’ perception towards the applicability and practicality, completion time, comprehension, comprehensiveness difficulty and instrusiveness of the instruments were inquired via a 5-item survey. For reliability purposes, the internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α) was calculated while
Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (rs) was used to examine the strength of associations between and within instruments (convergent/divergent validity). Results: To the majority of patients, both HADS and MMQoL instruments were considered clear, comprehensive and not difficult to complete (completion time < 10 minutes). The internal consistency reliability
for both HADS and MMQoL domains ranged from moderate to high. Within HADS itself, the individual items produced strong correlations with their own domains than with other domains (rs ≥ 4.0). Similarly, majority of individual items in MMQoL correlated stronger within their own domains compared to other domains (except Existential Well-Being and Support Issues) supporting validity. Conclusion: The overall findings suggested that both instruments have exhibited adequate evidence of reliability and validity plus being perceived as favourable for assessing health outcomes among cancer sufferers.
Study site: Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah (HSNZ), Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
Device, Questionnaire & Scale: Malay Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS); Malay McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire