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Fatigue is associated with various diseases of different origins extending from immune disorders to cancer. The purpose of this study was to explore the psychometric properties/dimensionality of the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) questionnaire in samples of healthy adults and patient subgroups in Greece.This was a multicenter cross-sectional study that included 80 women with breast cancer, 108 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), 100 people with thalassemia diagnosis, and 185 healthy adults, aged 18-45 years. All patients were adults. Patients were recruited from a breast surgery clinic, a neurological clinic, and a thalassemia unit, while healthy adults were recruited from the University of West Attica students and personnel. The MFI-20, the modified fatigue impact scale (MFIS), the fatigue severity scale (FSS), and the Hamilton anxiety-depression scale (HANDS) were used. Internal consistency, repeatability, test-retest reliability, construct, and convergent validity were investigated.MFI-20 exhibited excellent reliability properties (internal consistency: Cronbach's alpha MFI-20 subscales ranged from 0.83 to 0.94; repeatability: Pearson's r = 0.335 [p0.001]). Significant correlations were found between MFI-20 and MFIS: Pearson's r = 0.870, FSS: Pearson's r = 0.582 - 0.335, and HANDS: Pearson's r = 0.734 - 0.442 (all p-values0.0001) on all subsamples. However, its dimensionality is questionable depending on the subpopulation tested, and the one-dimension perspective is possible. MS patients exhibited the highest total score (55.26 ± 16.53), while thalassemia patients exhibited the lowest score (45.09 ± 13.54). In all subscales, thalassemia patients differed statistically significantly from the MS patients (p0.01), while in the reduced activity subscale, thalassemia patients differed significantly from all other groups (p0.01).As strict fatigue subscale classification is questionable, the use of MFI-20 total score is suggested for the assessment of fatigue in clinical populations. As MFI-20 is a very useful research tool for studying fatigue, the use of the total and/or partial scores depends on the clinical population. Total score instead of (or additionally) partial scores is suggested in clinical practice. |
