Cultural Adaptation and Validation of Sinhala Version of Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients (S-SNAP) Questionnaire: Results of a Pilot Study

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.