• Qingmei Huang, Ping Jiang, Zijun Zhang, Jie Luo, Yun Dai, Li Zheng, and Wei Wang.
• Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 79 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310003, China.
• Support Care Cancer. 2017 Dec 1; 25 (12): 3683-3690.

PurposeThe Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer (MAX-PC) was developed to identify and assess cancer-specific anxiety among men with prostate cancer (PCa); however, there is no Chinese version. The aim of our study was to translate the English version of MAX-PC into Chinese and evaluate the psychometric properties of it.MethodsThe study cohort comprised 254 participants. Internal consistency including the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and item-total correlations were used to measure the reliability of the scale. Factor structure was analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and concurrent validity by comparing MAX-PC scores with anxiety subscale scores of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Divergent validity was assessed by correlating MAX-PC with HADS depression subscale, while discriminant ability by comparing differences in MAX-PC scores between different patient groups.ResultsThe Chinese version of MAX-PC demonstrated good reliability; the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total and three subscales (prostate cancer anxiety, PSA anxiety, and fear of recurrence) being 0.94, 0.93, 0.82, and 0.85, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis supported the three-factor structure of the scale established in the original version. Despite the somewhat underperformed divergent validity, the scale demonstrated good concurrent validity with a strong correlation with the HADS anxiety subscale (r = 0.71, p < 0.01). Moreover, discriminant ability was demonstrated by ability to differentiate between disease stages.ConclusionsThe MAX-PC Chinese version was confirmed to be a valid, reliable instrument and is thus appropriate for identifying and quantifying cancer-specific anxiety in Chinese PCa patients.

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