Abstract:
Determining spiritual needs is an essential requirement of the holistic assessment of
palliated cancer patients. This study presents the results of a pilot study performed
during the validation of the Sinhala version of the Spiritual Needs Assessment for
Patients (SNAP) questionnaire. The original SNAP was translated into Sinhala
language (S-SNAP) by two translators conversant in both languages, blinded to each
other. The two translations were combined and translated back to the source language
by two separate translators. S-SNAP was assessed for content validity, clarity and
unambiguity by a panel of 6 specialists (including four clinicians involved in palliative
care) and the final version was administered to 27 palliated cancer patients. The
participants found the questionnaire easy to understand and unambiguous. The
average time to complete the questionnaire was 5 min. The overall Cronbach alpha
was 0.92, while the item-total correlations of the 22 items ranged from 0.40 to 0.78.
The Cronbach alpha values of three subcomponents; psychological needs, spiritual
needs and religious needs, were 0.86, 0.88 and 0.90, respectively. We found the SSNAP
to have adequate reliability and psychometric properties. The questionnaire
needs to be further assessed through a proper validation study.
