Psychological Well-Being Increment as Post-Traumatic Growth in Women with Breast Cancer: A Controlled Comparison Design Using Propensity Score Matching

Abstract

The aim of this study was to confirm post-traumatic growth with respect to the psychological well-being of women with breast cancer compared to women without disease. Propensity score was used to match the two groups according to age, religious beliefs, education level, monthly income, and marital status. A psychological well-being scale with six factors was used, including positive relations with others (PR), autonomy (AU), environmental mastery (EM), personal growth (PG), purpose in life (PL), and self-acceptance (SA). A total 178 women with vs. 178 women without breast cancer were compared by matching with propensity scores, using factorial invariance tests to reduce measurement errors. The results showed that women with breast cancer had significantly higher psychological well-being for all the six factors (Δχ2 = 37.37, p < 0.001) and higher variability in terms of PR, AU, and PL than women without breast cancer (Δχ2 = 45.94, p < 0.001). Furthermore, women with breast cancer exhibited a significantly higher association between PG and PL and a significantly lower association between PG and EM than women without breast cancer (Δχ2 = 44.49, p < 0.001). This implies that psychological well-being could assess broader and more subtle post-traumatic growth in women with breast cancer and that growth was more associated with internal life value than with external environmental control.