Cancer is the second leading cause of death among adolescents aged 12 to 17 years in Taiwan and in other high-income countries.1,2 Due to advances in early detection and cancer treatment, the 5-year survival rate among adolescents with cancer presents an upward trend, with cancer mortality presenting a downward trend within the same time frame.2 However, adolescents with cancer (ages 15–17 years) still have worse health outcomes than young adults with cancer (ages 18–25 years).3 This may be because adolescents are inadequately supported by current services. In clinical trials, adolescents are often grouped with young adults into an “adolescents and young adults” category and asked to use the adult version of care need assessment scales.4 This approach to research may prevent accurate interpretation of and attention to adolescents’ unique care needs and result in a continuing disparity in health care attention and outcomes.

In addition, adolescence is a period in which people have specific health and developmental needs.5 Adolescents are in the process of achieving maturity and independence and thus need additional assistance to successfully transition into adulthood.6,7 This also points to the importance of assessing the specific care needs for this understudied population.

Currently, the scales used to assess care needs for adolescents with cancer are delivered in a proxy-reported format or consist of a large number of items.8,9 A proxy-reported scale may not directly reflect adolescents’ unmet care needs. A lengthy scale may decrease their willingness to complete the measure.10 Yet there exist short measures that contain 5 to 20 items and demonstrate adequate psychometric properties.11 To reflect patient-centered care needs and increase adolescents’ willingness to complete research measures in busy clinical settings, it is essential to develop self-reported and concise scales for this age group. Adaptation of a valid, reliable, and well-developed scale for adults into an adolescent version is a feasible and efficient approach that has been successfully implemented in prior studies.12

The Supportive Care Needs Survey–Short Form (SCNS–SF34) is a survey originally designed to evaluate supportive care needs among English-speaking adult cancer survivors.13 The scale possesses comprehensive and rigorous psychometric properties and can be easily comprehended by people with a junior high school education. Due to its optimal validity and reliability, the SCNS–SF34 is, worldwide, the most commonly used measure for care needs.14 It has been translated into multiple languages, including Mandarin, German, French, and Japanese, and all versions appear to reach optimum levels of validity and reliability as well as appropriate fit in different cultural backgrounds.15, 16, 17, 18 In addition, a systematic review was conducted using the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstrument (COSMIN) guideline to assess 30 studies that report 24 instruments in assessing unmet needs for patients with cancer.19 It found that the SCNS–SF34 is one of few reliable tools to assess unmet care needs. Therefore, based on the literature review summarized here, we determined that the SCNS–SF34 would be an appropriate scale to modify as the SCNS–Adolescent Form (SCNS–AF). Therefore, the purposes of the study reported here were to modify the Mandarin-language SCNS–SF34 into the SCNS–AF and to examine the psychometric properties of the SCNS–AF.