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Sex, intimacy and partner communication after cancer treatment are understudied aspects of survivorship for women, yet integral to quality of life and relationships. Self-efficacy is an important personal state variable that is potentially modifiable by interventions to enhance women’s adjustment after cancer treatment, and is therefore important to measure in interventions to improve sexual wellbeing. There is, however, no publicly-available validated standardized measure to evaluate women’s self-efficacy related to sex and intimacy in the context of cancer treatment impact for use in research and clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to develop the Self-Efficacy to Communicate about Sex and Intimacy (SECSI) scale and to examine its psychometric performance in women treated for cancer. A mixed-methods approach with two sequential phases was used to refine (Phase I; Aim 1) and to test (Phase II; Aims 2 and 3) the SECSI scale. In Phase I, 20 female cancer survivors provided iterative qualitative feedback, through cognitive interviews, on 25 draft candidate items included in the initial draft instrument. Cognitive interview feedback was coded and incorporated to further refine the draft items in the SECSI scale, including revisions to clarify phrasing, and to remove problematic items. The main result from Phase I was the generation of a final draft version of a 10-item SECSI scale intended to evaluate women’s confidence in their ability to communicate with their partner about changes in sex and intimacy after cancer treatment. In Phase II, quantitative methods were used to evaluate the psychometric performance of the SECSI scale in a sample of 226 partnered women treated for cancer. Phase II participants completed an online survey that included the SECSI scale and sociodemographic, clinical, and cancer characteristics. A SECSI scale retest survey was administered two weeks later. The SECSI scale was reliable, with a Cronbach coefficient alpha of 0.94, and high 2-week test-retest reliability, r = 0.82, p |
