Measuring the unmet supportive care needs of cancer support persons: the development of the support person's unmet needs survey--short form.
Few rigorous measures of unmet needs have been developed for cancer support persons. This study describes the development of a short version of the Support Person's Unmet Needs Survey (SPUNS). Cancer survivors [n = 1589, 612 (52%) men, mean age of 62.5 years, SD 11.5] 1-5 years post diagnosis and recruited through three Canadian population-based cancer registries were asked to pass a survey package on to their principal support person. Surveys were returned by 1183 support persons. The survey included the long form of the SPUNS, which contains 78 items. Fifty-two items were deleted using a combination of expert opinion and statistical criteria. Analysis of the remaining items revealed a five-factor structure. The original factors were retained with the exception of a merging of the personal and emotional needs subscales. Cronbach's alpha co-efficients for all subscales were ≥ 0.87, and intraclass correlation of domain scores of the short and long versions of the SPUNS were high. The SPUNS short form was able to discriminate between support persons of survivors who had (n = 147), and those who had not received treatment in the past month (n = 969). At just 26 items, it is likely to have strong clinical and research applicability.
['Campbell|S H|SH|', 'Carey|M|M|', 'Sanson-Fisher|R|R|', 'Barker|D|D|', 'Turner|D|D|', 'Taylor-Brown|J|J|', 'Hall|A|A|']
D000368:Aged D017028:Caregivers D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D020380:Needs Assessment D009369:Neoplasms D011594:Psychometrics D011788:Quality of Life D012944:Social Support D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
cancer support person unmet needs caregiver carer psychometrics