System of belief inventory (SBI-15R): a validation study in Italian cancer patients on oncological, rehabilitation, psychological and supportive care settings.

Aims And Background: Spiritual and religious needs are part of a patient's clinical history. The aim of the study was to validate the System of Belief Inventory (SBI-15R) in Italy. It is a feasible way to collect useful information on spiritual needs and resources of patients at any stage of the disease.

Methods: After the translation procedure, the psychometric properties of the Italian version of SBI-15R were evaluated in patients with non-advanced cancer cared for in four care settings. All patients were administered the Italian version of SBI-15R together with an hoc item inquiring about spirituality--"I believe I am a spiritual person", which was supposed to be correlated with the SBI-15R score.

Results: A total of 257 patients were enrolled (mean age, 53.6 years; 191 females, 50% breast cancers, 12% had mestastases). As regards spirituality and religious beliefs, 47.9% were churchgoers; 42% believers but not churchgoers, and 7.8% non-believers; 86.7% of the patients were catholic. The construct validity was high both for the Belief Scale (Cronbach alpha = 0.946) and for the Support Scale (Cronbach alpha = 0.897). The mean (+/- SD) SBI-15R scores of the different groups of patients (known-groups validity) for the "Support" scale was 9.7 (+/- 3.4) for churchgoers, 4.9 (+/- 3.2) for believers non-churchgoers, and 0.8 (+/- 1.4) for non-believers (P < 0.0001, F test). For the "beliefs" scale, it was 25.4 (+/- 4.8) for churchgoers, 18.1 (+/- 6.3) for believers non-churchgoers, and 3.4 (+/- 3.5) for non-believers (P < 0.0001, F test). Regarding the test-retest reliability (n = 68), Lin's concordance correlation for the "Support" scale was 0.890 (0.841; 0.939 95% CI) and for the "Belief" scale was 0.969 (0.955; 0.984 95% CI). The correlation between the statement "I believe I am a spiritual person" and the SBI-15R scores was 0.475 for the "Support" scale and 0.473 for the "Belief" scale."

Conclusions: The Italian version of SBI-15R is a valid and reliable assessment tool to evaluate religiousness and spirituality in cancer patients.