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The Distress Thermometer: Validity In A General Cancer Population, Carole S. Moretz

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This work reports on the psychometric properties of a new measure designed to screen for distress in large populations of cancer patients. The Distress Thermometer (Holland et al., 2000) was tested in a group of 239 heterogeneously diagnosed cancer patients. It was found to be internally consistent (a= 0.86) and to exhibit a reliable eight-factor solution. It displayed acceptable concurrent validity (p ≤ 0.0001) when compared to the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (deHaes et al., 1994), the Functional Living Index Cancer (Schipper et al., 1984) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis, 1993). It was also found to be a sensitive measure …