ABSTRACT

Self-management behaviors have an important place in disease management in epilepsy patients. The aim of this study is to adapt the “Epilepsy Self-Management Scale” to Turkish.

This study was conducted in an epilepsy outpatient clinic of a university hospital from February to September 2014. Study sample consisted of 194 patients who were over 18 years of age, who could speak Turkish language, had a definite diagnosis of epilepsy and had no medical problem affecting the quality of life other than epilepsy. Scale was presented to nine experts in the field of neurology to assess linguistic and content validity and then final version was created in line with their recommendations. General Self-efficacy Scale was used to determine concurrent validity. To evaluate variability of the scale in time, test-retest reliability was examined in the sample group of 30 people. In addition, the correlations of the scale with Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Stigma Scale, Epilepsy Knowledge Scale and Epilepsy Attitude Scale were evaluated.

Content validity index of the scale was 0.95. The correlation of the scale with the General Self-Efficacy Scale was found to be significant (p0.05). Significant correlations were found with other scales.

The Turkish version of the Epilepsy Self-Management Scale was found to be a valid and reliable scale for use in the Turkish population.

Keywords: Epilepsy, Epilepsy Self-Management Scale, validity and reliability