Validation of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Spiritual Well-Being Scale in veterans with PTSD.

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure of 2 versions of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp) scale in a sample of Veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The FACIT-Sp has 12- and 23-item versions that have been factor analyzed in other populations with mixed factor solutions. Spiritual well-being is of growing interest in military and veteran populations; valid and reliable measures are needed for research with these groups. A sample of 146 Veterans diagnosed with PTSD was selected for this analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test competing factorial structures for the 12-item FACIT-Sp. Both a 2-factor and 3-factor model were compared. For the 12-item FACIT-Sp, a more plausible model of spiritual well-being was found with the 3-factor model, separating Meaning from Peace and including Faith subscales. The addition of 11 more items in the 23-item FACIT-Sp did not improve model fit to any substantial degree. Therefore, the 12-item FACIT-Sp with a 3- rather than 2-factor solution (e.g., subscales of Peace, Meaning, and Faith) is recommended as the most accurate representation of the spiritual well-being components in this study of veterans with PTSD