Developing a scale to measure parental worry and their attitudes toward childhood cancer after successful completion of treatment: a pilot study.

The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the psychometric characteristics of a scale designed to measure parents' attitude toward childhood cancer after treatment has ended. In this study, the 2 theoretical frameworks (theory of attitude and theory of worry) were used as they related to the study. An attitude is an idea charged with negative or positive emotion, directed to a psychological object, such as cancer. A sample of 84 White, middle class, American parents (n = 49 mothers, n = 35 fathers) of 51 childhood cancer survivors, whose treatment ended between 1988 and 2005, was surveyed between November 2005 and February 2006. Two factors were extracted using principal component analysis with oblique rotation. Cronbach's alpha reliability for Factor 1 was .91 and for Factor 2 was .76. This study suggests that most parents of cancer survivors tend to perseverate, ruminating on the idea that their child's cancer will return; as a result, they remain in a heightened state of alertness and develop uncontrollable thoughts, or inconsolable worry, about the recurrence of the disease.