Development and Validation of Existential Issues Scale for Breast Cancer Women: A Pakistani Context

This study sheds light on breast cancer women's existential issues. The literature review found few studies on Eastern breast cancer women's existential issues, thus the current research concentrated on them. This study's broad literature review found few measures to measure existential issues from breast cancer women's perspectives. Thus, this research sought to develop an Indigenous measure of Pakistani breast cancer women's existential issues. This study uses exploratory sequential mixed methods. Samples were taken via purposive sampling. Focus Group Discussions and semi-structured interviews with breast cancer women illuminated existential issues in a collectivistic society. Reflexive Thematic Analysis of qualitative data revealed culture-specific and universal themes of existential issues among breast cancer women. These themes were utilized to create a set of items to assess breast cancer patients' existential issues. A panel of experts evaluated each question and voted on its suitability for the test's target audience's target language competency. In addition, exploratory factor analysis (n=200) produced a two-factor model of existential issues for breast cancer women, called the "Personal Dimension" and the "Social Dimension." Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed this component structure in 30 items with factor loadings ≥ 0.40. Moreover, both subscales had good internal consistency of .81 and .77 for existential issues (Cronbach's alpha = 0.78). The new EIS convergent and discriminant validity were assessed. EIS appears trustworthy for indigenous breast cancer women.