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

by Irena Ilic, Goran Babic, Aleksandra Dimitrijevic, Milena Ilic, Sandra Sipetic Grujicic

Receiving report of an abnormal finding from a Pap screening test in women often leads to psychological distress.

The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the Cervical Dysplasia Distress Questionnaire (CDDQ) among women in Serbia.

In 2017, we conducted a cross-sectional study involving 154 consecutive women attending cervical cancer screening who had received abnormal Pap smear 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.

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.