Psychological distress among women with abnormal pap smear results in Serbia: Validity and reliability of the Cervical Dysplasia Distress Questionnaire

Abstract

© 2019 Ilic et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background Receiving report of an abnormal finding from a Pap screening test in women often leads to psychological distress. Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the Cervical Dysplasia Distress Questionnaire (CDDQ) among women in Serbia. Methods In 2017, we conducted a cross-sectional study involving 154 consecutive women attending cervical cancer screening who had received abnormal Pap smear results. Results Reliability assessment showed good internal consistency for all CDDQ subscales (Tension and discomfort: Cronbach’s α = 0.844; Embarrassment: α = 0.864; Sexual and reproductive consequences: α = 0.867; and Health consequences: α = 0.913). The test-retest reliability showed that the correlation coefficients (between 0.805 and 0.983) were significant at the 0.01 level for all of the Serbian CDDQ subscales. Principal Axis Factoring with Direct Oblimin rotation indicated four main components that explain 55.0% of variance. Conclusion The Serbian version of the CDDQ scale is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of psychological distress among women with abnormal Pap smear results.