Translation and validation of the Dutch version of the Fear of Cancer Recurrence Inventory (FCRI-NL)

Objective: 

The study objectives are to translate the FCRI in Dutch, and to explore the factor structure and the psychometric qualities of the Dutch translation of the Fear of Cancer Recurrence Inventory (FCRI-NL).

Method: 

The original French-Canadian FCRI had been forward-backward translated into English by the developers, and this method was also used to translate the English version of the FCRI into Dutch. Patients were recruited via patient organizations between July 2011 and October 2013. To replicate the original 7-factor structure of the FCRI, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed. To examine the psychometric qualities, reliability (Cronbach's alpha), test-retest reliability (intra-class correlations; ICC), and convergent and divergent validity (Spearman's correlations) were calculated.

Results: 

From 290 cancer patients, 255 (88%) were eligible for analysis (aged 51.0 +/- 9.8 years, 88.6% women). CFA showed a reasonable yet suboptimal fit of the hypothesized model to the data. The FCRI-NL has good reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.93 for the total scale and alpha = 0.75-0.92 for the subscales) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.84 for the total scale and ICC = 0.56-0.87 for the subscales). Convergent (r = 0.53-0.66 for the FCRI-NL and r = 0.48-0.57 for the FCRI-SF-NL) and divergent (r = - 0.20- - 0.07 for the FCRI-NL and r = - 0.28- - 0.17 for the FCRI-SF-NL) validity was demonstrated.

Conclusion: 

The FCRI-NL seems to have sufficient psychometric properties. However, the FCRI-NL total score should be interpreted with caution. The Severity subscale (FCRI-SF-NL) may be a valuable screening tool for fear of cancer recurrence severity in clinical care.