Instrument design and validation for the Mendez Inventory of Nausea and Emesis (MINE)

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to validate a new instrument, the Mendez Inventory of Nausea and Emesis (MINE), which was designed to determine an individual's susceptibility to developing nausea/vomiting from a variety of stimuli. This project also determined if the MINE demonstrated a relationship to the development of chemotherapy-induced nausea and emesis. Two separate studies were carried out to accomplish these goals.;Methods and Results for Study I: First, an online study was performed with 510 subjects who completed the initial instrument. Participants were accrued through SurveyMonkey, an online survey company. The online study administered the MINE and the Feelings and Fears of Nausea Questionnaire to participants, along with the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire- Short Form (MSSQ-S) developed by another author. Statistics included factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha, and Pearson's correlations. The factor analysis produced subscales of the MINE that were further analyzed and these are: car travel, all other methods of travel, medication history, and history of alcohol consumption. Reliability of the individual subscales was strong with Cronbach's alphas of .892 and above. Validity of the MINE motion sickness scales as a whole was also strong when correlated with the MSSQ-S with r = .643.;Methods and Results for Study II: A preliminary validation study was performed with 49 women undergoing chemotherapy for a feminine cancer. These subjects were recruited at a community outpatient cancer center. These women completed the MINE, Feelings and Fears, and the MSSQ-S, along with the Morrow Assessment of Nausea and Emesis (MANE). About half of the women (N = 25) experienced nausea and many fewer (N = 8) in the sample experienced vomiting as a result of chemotherapy. Reliability of the instrument in this sample was moderately strong with Cronbach's alpha ranging from .620 to .954 for the subscales. Concurrent validity of the motion sickness subscales of the MINE was supported by correlations with MSSQ-S of r = .788 for the under 12 year old items, and r = .728 for the items assessing experiences of the last 10 years. However, only the medications subscale of the MINE was significantly related to whether nausea was experienced as a result of chemotherapy.;Conclusions: The MINE is easy to comprehend, and demonstrates good reliability and concurrent validity as a new instrument. Although the instrument is promising, there needs to be further research to further validate the scoring of the MINE, specifically for the morning sickness items which can be used as a separate scale.