Examining fatigue in COPD: development, validity and reliability of a modified version of FACIT-F scale.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Fatigue is a disruptive symptom that inhibits normal functional performance of COPD patients in daily activities. The availability of a short, simple, reliable and valid scale would improve assessment of the characteristics and influence of fatigue in COPD.

Methods

At baseline, 2107 COPD patients from the ECLIPSE cohort completed the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy Fatigue (FACIT-F) scale. We used well-structured classic method, the principal components analysis (PCA) and Rasch analysis for structurally examining the 13-item FACIT-F.

Results

Four items were less able to capture fatigue characteristics in COPD and were deleted. PCA was applied to the remaining 9 items of the modified FACIT-F and resulted in three interpretable dimensions:

SUBMITTER: Al-shair K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3491053 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature