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Coping with some chronic condition and life threatening disease warrants experience of grief. An indigenous scale for assessment of grief experienced by Cancer patients was developed and validated in the present study. The items were generated through literature review, interviews with cancer patients and psychologists. Scale contained 30 items and it was administered on 250 cancer patients and data was subjected to factor analysis which yielded four factors i.e., Physical, Emotional, Cognitive, and Social components of grief. For the present sample, scale showed very high reliability (α = .93). Convergent validity of Grief scale was determined against grief subscale totals of Palliative Grief Depression Scale. Correlation analysis indicated high correlation between two scales' scores (r =.63, p < .01) thereby revealing high convergent validity of the indigenous scale. Discriminant validity was measured by comparing the sums of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire with Grief Scale. Significant negative relationship was found between these two scales (r = -.29, p < .01). Psychometric properties of Grief Scale showed that it is a valid and reliable too for assessing experience of grief in Cancer patients in the Pakistani cultural context.
Keywords: Grief, reliability, validity, Grief Scale, cancer patients
Grief is a normal response to loss and covers a broad range of feelings, sensations, thoughts, emotions and behaviors (Doka, 2007). Pangs of grief may trigger by individuals, places or things at any time that may bring reminiscences of painful event. Though grief usually refers to an emotive and sensitive reaction to the sudden death of a closed one, individuals suffering from cancer and their relatives may undergo other cancer-related deformities, for instance, the loss of a physical organ (breast) or infertility, loss of relationships and loss of independence (Periyakoil & Hallenbeck, 2002). The terms grief, mourning and bereavement are often used reciprocally. Even though, some researchers termed grief as an emotional reaction of a person to the experience of loss. Mourning is the behavior manifestation of the grief, which is prone to religious customs and cultural rituals surrounding death. Bereavement is the period of grief and subsequently mourning over the decease of a family member (Zisook & Shear, 2009). A number of studies have linked signs and responses of grief to anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, suicide...