Loading
Twenty-seven questions about the past week, in four areas: the body, family and friends, feelings, and being able to do ordinary things. Dozens of add-ons exist for particular cancers and particular symptoms, including the fatigue scale used in most anaemia and fatigue trials.
The Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy general scale was developed from open-ended interviews with patients and oncology professionals and validated across five phases involving 854 people with cancer and 15 oncology specialists. The 1993 paper describes the resulting instrument as producing "subscale scores for physical, functional, social, and emotional well-being, as well as satisfaction with the treatment relationship". The version in use now, FACT-G version 4, has 27 items in four subscales, physical, social and family, emotional and functional well-being, with a recall period the publisher gives as "Past 7 days" and a completion time it gives as "5-10 minutes".
The family is the reason it matters. FACIT, the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy system, built the core scale out into a library: disease-specific versions (FACT-B for breast, FACT-C for colorectal, FACT-L for lung, FACT-P for prostate, FACT-BMT for transplant), symptom-specific versions (FACIT-Fatigue, FACT-Cog, FACT-GOG-Ntx for neuropathy, FACIT-Sp for spiritual well-being), and treatment-specific versions. A disease-specific instrument is built as the core 27 items plus an additional concerns subscale, so a FACT-B score contains a FACT-G score inside it.
FACIT-Fatigue deserves separate mention because it is the instrument behind most of the fatigue literature on this front. It came out of the FACT-Anemia work, which built scales to measure "fatigue and other anemia-related symptoms" within the FACT system, and is now used far outside anaemia.
FACT-G against QLQ-C30. They measure overlapping things and correlate well, but they are not interchangeable and a trial that reports one does not give you the other. FACT scores run higher is better throughout, including on the symptom-type items, which are worded and reverse-scored so that a higher score always means a better state. That is the opposite convention to the QLQ-C30 symptom scales and is the second commonest misreading in this field.
What it misses. Social and family well-being includes items about sexual activity that many respondents decline, which is a known source of missing data; the emotional subscale is short; and like the QLQ-C30 it has no fear of recurrence item. Licensing is also a practical limit: the FACIT measures require registration for permission to use, which is free for academic use but is a step a service has to take.
A core 27-item general cancer measure with a four-domain structure, extended by additional concerns subscales for a disease, a symptom or a treatment, all scored in the same direction so that a higher total always means better reported well-being.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"FACT-G and the FACIT family: the other main questionnaire" OR ABSTRACT:"FACT-G and the FACIT family: the other main questionnaire") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about FACT-G and the FACIT family: the other main questionnaire, not a curated reading list.
Shares PROMIS: the item banks that let a short questionnaire be precise, EORTC QLQ-C30: the questionnaire most cancer trials use, How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares What a difference has to be before a person would notice it, How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency, Quality of life and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares BREAST-Q and the Q-portfolio: measuring what an operation left behind, What a difference has to be before a person would notice it, How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Quality of life and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares What a difference has to be before a person would notice it, How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency, Quality of life and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares What a difference has to be before a person would notice it, EORTC QLQ-C30: the questionnaire most cancer trials use, How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Cancer-related fatigue (tiredness) and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, instruments.
Shares How recovery is measured: the questionnaires behind the numbers, Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency, Quality of life, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares PROMIS: the item banks that let a short questionnaire be precise, Quality of life, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer, Colorectal cancer and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement, instruments.
Shares Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency, Quality of life, Multiple myeloma, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer and the tags rejuvenation, survivorship, measurement.