Abstract
BACKGROUND: Self-care behaviors play an important role in disease management and improving the health outcomes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. However, currently available Turkish instruments to measure self-care behaviors in RA patients are not disease-specific or have low reliability. The aim of this study was to adapt the Self-Care Behaviors Scale (SCBS), developed specifically for RA patients, into Turkish and evaluate its psychometric properties. METHODS: The study was conducted with 378 RA patients admitted to the Rheumatology Outpatient Clinic of a university hospital. Content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability examined the psychometric properties of the scale. RESULTS: The SCBS-T with its seven factors and 25 items was found to be valid (KMO = 0.957; Bartlett's test χ2 = 6614.69, p < 0.001), to explain 67.80% of the total variance, and to have good fit indices (χ2/df = 2.920; GFI = 0.861; CFI = 0.925; RMSEA = 0.078; TLI = 0.912; SRMR = 0.045). The scale's overall Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.86, while the subscales ranged between 0.74 and 0.81. One-week interval test-retest reliability was 0.81. CONCLUSIONS: The high validity and reliability results of the SCBS-T indicate that the scale will form a strong basis for its routine use by health professionals in clinical settings and for the development of educational programs on the self-care of RA patients.