Self‐efficacy for coping with cancer in glioma patients measured by the Cancer Behavior Inventory Brief Version

Self-efficacy for coping with cancer (SECC) refers to a person's confidence in his or her ability to execute coping behaviors required to deal with cancer and its treatment. A meta-analysis has shown recently that cancer patients with greater SECC have lower psychological distress and higher healthrelated quality of life. However, the studies from the review included mostly breast cancer patients but rare data of patients with primary brain tumors especially glioma patients. Furthermore, no study was published focusing solely on brain tumor patients (see Table S1). Due to a high symptom load, poor prognosis, and neurocognitive deficits as well as severe neurocognitive decline, glioma patients represent a special cancer patient population. Possibly, they might trust less in their own coping strategies, what could result in a lower SECC. It is often assumed that cancer patients with high levels of distress and low quality of life need support. Therefore, we aimed to investigate if patients with greater SECC not only have less distress but also have lower unmet supportive care needs. Furthermore, brain tumor patients may have difficulties in completing questionnaires. Thus, a secondary aim was to evaluate the feasibility of the Cancer Behavior Inventory Brief Version (CBI-B) as a short questionnaire assessing SECC in glioma patients. Routine assessment SECC in glioma patients could help to developed specific interventions targeting patients' SECC with cancer in order to reduce their distress and unmet needs. 2 | METHODS