The Turkish version of the self-care behaviors scale for rheumatoid arthritis patients: cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation.

BACKGROUND

Self-care behaviors play an important role in disease management and improving the health outcomes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. However, currently available Turkish instruments to measure self-care behaviors in RA patients are not disease-specific or have low reliability. The aim of this study was to adapt the Self-Care Behaviors Scale (SCBS), developed specifically for RA patients, into Turkish and evaluate its psychometric properties.

METHODS

The study was conducted with 378 RA patients admitted to the Rheumatology Outpatient Clinic of a university hospital. Content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability examined the psychometric properties of the scale.

RESULTS

The SCBS-T with its seven factors and 25 items was found to be valid (KMO = 0.957; Bartlett's test χ2 = 6614.69, p < 0.001), to explain 67.80% of the total variance, and to have good fit indices (χ2/df = 2.920; GFI = 0.861; CFI = 0.925; RMSEA = 0.078; TLI = 0.912; SRMR = 0.045). The scale's overall Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.86, while the subscales ranged between 0.74 and 0.81. One-week interval test-retest reliability was 0.81.

CONCLUSIONS

The high validity and reliability results of the SCBS-T indicate that the scale will form a strong basis for its routine use by health professionals in clinical settings and for the development of educational programs on the self-care of RA patients.