CAREN logo

You are here

  1. Home
  2. A Visual-Analogue Screening Tool for Assessing Mood and Quality of Daily Life Complications in Family Members of People Living With Cancer: Portuguese Version of the Emotion Thermometers: Burden Version

A Visual-Analogue Screening Tool for Assessing Mood and Quality of Daily Life Complications in Family Members of People Living With Cancer: Portuguese Version of the Emotion Thermometers: Burden Version

Cancer is a disease that impacts not only the patient but also affects the entire family. Family members experience high levels of distress. Therefore, screening for cancer-specific distress among family members of people with cancer is important but relatively unexplored. This cross-sectional study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of a screening tool for family members of people with cancer. We examined the usefulness of the emotional thermometers burden version (ET-BV) in detecting caregiver emotional distress. The ET-BV is a simple multidomain visual analogue scale distributed in two major domains: "emotional upset" and "impact." A total of 364 cancer patients' family members completed the ET-BV and Brief Symptom Inventory. Analyses were aimed to examine the diagnostic accuracy (receiver operating characteristic) of the ET-BV. A fair to good diagnostic accuracy was achieved for ET-BV. For emotional upset thermometers, a cutoff of ≥5 was determined and for impact thermometers, a cutoff of ≥4 was established. ET-BV seems to be a useful, quick, and simple tool for distress screening in family members of people with cancer. A revision of a specific thermometer is discussed in order to increase ET screening performance and clinical utility. 

Access source material through DOI

Key Information

Type of Reference
Jour
Type of Work
Journal article
Publisher
Sage
ISBN/ISSN
0163-2787
Publication Year
2020
Issue Number
4
Journal Titles
Evaluation & the Health Professions
Volume Number
43
Start Page
264
End Page
269