Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (i) develop a self-report instrument to measure adjustment to chronic illness, (ii) evaluate its core structure and (iii) study various psychometric properties in the development of this instrument.
Method: The entire process of developing and validating the instrument is conducted in different phases: item writing and content validation; exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to extract dimensions of the instrument; reliability and validity testing. A total of 1095 participants were included in the study. The EFA was run using IBM SPSS 23 and CFA was done by AMOS 21.
Results: The Cronbach alpha of the chronic illness adjustment scale was found to be .70. The instrument correlates positively with illness perception and well-being which supports the notion that the chronic illness adjustment scale has satisfactory convergent validity.
Discussion: The multifaceted nature of the chronic illness adjustment scale can serve as a global indicator of adjustment to chronic illness, allowing various interventions to flow toward the healthcare arena.
Keywords: Chronic illness; confirmatory factor analysis; exploratory factor analysis; illness adjustment; scale development; validation.