Cross-cultural assessment of the Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory: A psychometric evaluation.

The study included only Italy, Sweden and the US, so it does not show that the inventory works in other countries. The design was cross-sectional, so it says nothing about how self-care changes over time. Italy and the US used convenience samples, while only the Swedish sample was consecutive, so the samples may not represent all patients. Patients with dementia, severe illiteracy or inability to read the survey language were excluded, so results may not apply to those patients. Strict invariance was not reached, so individual item scores may not mean the same thing in each country. Because the countries differed in both culture and language, the study could not separate the effects of culture and language. Most participants were older adults with multiple chronic conditions, so findings may not apply to younger adults or people with fewer chronic conditions.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that the SC-CII is equally valid for every item, every country or every patient. The study tested only Italy, Sweden and the US, used convenience samples in Italy and the US, and did not reach the strictest level of equivalence, so some items may be interpreted differently.