Reliability and Validity of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire in Bahasa Malaysia for Patients with Cancer.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE\nThe main purpose of this study was to identify the psychometric properties and validate\xa0 \xa0the Bahasa Malaysia version of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire among patients with cancer.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA total of 129 newly diagnosed patients with cancer were consecutively sampled. Reliability and validity of the questionnaire were tested using translation validity, test-retest reliability, Principal Component Analysis, Cronbach s alpha coefficient for domains and item-total correlation.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe questionnaire indicates excellent test-retest reliability. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed that Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) is 0.60 for the two-factor structure of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire of the Bahasa Malaysia version which consists of cognitive illness representation and emotional illness representation.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire in the Bahasa Malaysia version is a useful tool to use among patients with cancer in Malaysia context despite moderate psychometric properties. This is based on the premise that the questionnaire can be used as a quick tool to assess illness perceptions among Malaysian with cancer in routine oncology practice.