• Femke Jansen, Birgit I Witte, Cornelia F van Uden-Kraan, Anna M Braspenning, C René Leemans, and Irma M Verdonck-de Leeuw.
• Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Cancer Center Amsterdam (CCA), VU University Medical Center, PO Box 7057, 1007 MB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Support Care Cancer. 2016 Nov 1; 24 (11): 4639-49.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the 34-item Short-Form Supportive Care Needs Survey (SCNS-SF34) and the newly developed module for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients (SCNS-HNC).MethodsHNC patients were included from two cross-sectional studies. Content validity of the SCNS-HNC was analysed by examining redundancy and completeness of items. Factor structure was assessed using confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses. Cronbach's alpha, Spearman's correlation, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskall-Wallis and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to assess internal consistency, construct validity and test-retest reliability.ResultsContent validity of the SCNS-HNC was good, although some HNC topics were missing. For the SCNS-SF34, a four-factor structure was found, namely physical and daily living, psychological, sexuality and health system and information and patient support (alpha = .79 to .95). For the SCNS-HNC, a two-factor structure was found, namely HNC-specific functioning and lifestyle (alpha = .89 and .60). Respectively, 96 and 89 % of the hypothesised correlations between the SCNS-SF34 or SCNS-HNC and other patient-reported outcome measures were found; 57 and 67 % also showed the hypothesised magnitude of correlation. The SCNS-SF34 domains discriminated between treatment procedure (physical and daily living p = .02 and psychological p = .01) and time since treatment (health system, information and patient support p = .02). Test-retest reliability of SCNS-SF34 domains and HNC-specific functioning domain was above .70 (ICC = .74 to .83), and ICC = .67 for the lifestyle domain. Floor effects ranged from 21.1 to 70.9 %.ConclusionsThe SCNS-SF34 and SCNS-HNC are valid and reliable instruments to evaluate the need for supportive care among (Dutch) HNC patients.

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