Assessing spirituality and religiousness in advanced cancer patients.

The aim of this study was to translate the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale into the Greek language and validate its psychometric properties in a sample of advanced cancer patients treated in a palliative care unit. The scale was translated into Greek with the "forward-backward" procedure. It was administered twice, with a 3-day interval, to 82 patients with advanced cancer. Patients completed the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale and the Greek Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The scale had an overall Cronbach alpha of 0.89. Overall test-retest reliability was satisfactory at P<.0005. Satisfactory construct validity was supported between the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale subscales and Hospital Anxiety and Depression subscales. Interscale and interitem correlations were found satisfactory at P<.0005. These results support that the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale is an instrument with satisfactory psychometric properties and is a valid research tool for spirituality in advanced cancer patients.