Validity and Reliability of the Palliative Care Knowledge Scale

Tools to measure layout people’s knowledge about palliative care are very limited. This study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of the Palliative Care Knowledge Scale (PaCKS) in Turkish on layout people other than healthcare professionals. Perception of Health Scale (PHS) and European Health Literacy Survey (EHLS) scales were used to ensure concurrent validity of PaCKS. Cronbach’s alpha value of the scale was found to be .846. In item analysis, item-total score correlations were found to be between .343 and .691. Intraclass correlation coefficient of PaCKS total score was found to be .862, p < .001 in test–retest results. In the concurrent validity analysis, there was a statistically significant positive correlation between the PaCKS and the PHS (r = .504, p = .000) and PaCKS and the EHLS (r = .251, p = .017). PaCKS is a simple, applicable and short test that can be easily understood by layout people without any health education.