Development of the Schwartz Cancer Fatigue Scale Anna L. Schwartz, FNP, PhD	PDF File
Professor & Scottsdale Healthcare Cancer research Endowed Chair Arizona State Univerity, P.O. Box 1708, Cave Creek, AZ 85327

Abstract

The Schwartz Cancer Fatigue Scale is a short, clinically relevant well-tested instrument that measures cancer-related fatigue on two dimensions (physical and perceptual).  The scale has been tested in heterogeneous patients during and following treatment and against other measures of fatigue and continues to be a robust and parsimonious measure of fatigue.

The Schwartz Cancer Fatigue Scale (SCFS) was developed in response to a recognized need for a reliable and valid instrument specifically designed to measure cancer-related fatigue. Most other measures of cancer-related fatigue are incorporated in instruments intended to measure other aspects of functioning. After extensive psychometric testing the SCFS has become a parsimonious, 6-item measure of cancer-related fatigue on physical and perceptual dimensions.

Scale Development
Scale development included attention to the theoretical construct of cancer-related fatigue, content validity, internal consistency reliability, sensitively and construct validity.  The first step included generating an item pool and recruiting healthy people (N=10) and ambulatory cancer patients (N=10) to select words from a list that described fatigue. Formal content validity was then examined by 5 oncology nurse experts and 6 cancer patients who reviewed the items for relevancy of each word to fatigue. From the original list of 72 words, 41 words achieved the relevancy endorsement required to establish content validity at the 0.05 significance level 1.

Preliminary testing of the SCFS was on a diverse sample of cancer survivors (N=166) who were currently receiving treatment (N=20) or had recently completed treatment (N=146).