A Chinese Version of the Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients Survey Instrument

Context: Unmet spiritual needs have been associated with decreased patient ratings of quality of care, satisfaction, and quality of life. Few instruments exist to measure spiritual needs particularly among non-English speaking patients in the U. S. Objective: To develop an internally consistent and reliable Chinese version of the Spiritual Needs Assessment for Patients (SNAP). Methods: The SNAP consists of 23 total items in 3 domains: psychosocial (n = 5), spiritual (n = 13), and religious (n = 5). The Chinese SNAP was developed through a translation-back translation process followed by cognitive pre-testing. The instrument was then administered to a convenience sample of 30 ambulatory predominantly Mandarin speaking cancer patients in New York. We tested for internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and degree of association with the question "Have your spiritual needs been met?'' Results: Mean participant age was 56 years, 70% had less than a high school education. Twenty three percent were Buddhist, 63% identified no religious affiliation, 83% described themselves as spiritual but not religious, 33% reported unmet spiritual needs, and 60% wanted help meeting their spiritual needs. The Cronbach's alpha for the total SNAP was 0.89. Test-retest correlation coefficient for the total SNAP=0.75. Unmet spiritual needs, as assessed through a single-item question, were not associated with higher SNAP scores in contrast to results of the English SNAP. Conclusion: The Chinese SNAP is an internally consistent and reliable instrument for measuring spiritual needs. The apparent lack of correlation between the SNAP score and the question on unmet spiritual needs may suggest that the SNAP captures patient needs considered by Westerners to be spiritual but that Chinese patients might not readily describe as spiritual.