Purpose: This article describes the development of the Ostomy Adjustment Inventory-23 (OAI-23), a self-report, multidimensional scale designed to assess psychosocial adjustment in patients with ostomy.
Subjects and setting: Five hundred seventy persons with a colostomy, ileostomy, or urostomy, who were randomly selected from 3 national databases, provided assessable data.
Results: The results indicate that the OAI-23 is reliable (the Cronbach alpha = .93, split-half = 0.91, and test-retest (r) = 0.83) and valid, correlating positively with Felton's Acceptance of Illness Scale (r = 0.72) and confirming expected improvements in adjustment consistent with increasing time since surgery (F 5,531 = 5.22, P < .001). Four factors (eigenvalue >or= 1) that accounted for 55.4% of the total variance emerged from factor analysis.
Conclusion: The OAI-23 is a valid and reliable measure of psychosocial adjustment that will be of interest to both researchers investigating life after stoma surgery and clinicians making objective assessments of their patients' progress.