Development of age appropriate vision function questionnaire for children with visual impairment (CHVI-VFQ)

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To develop a new age?appropriate visual function questionnaire for visually impaired children. Methods: The study was conducted in north India in 20,955 (97.3%) children ?15 years who underwent visual acuity examination. Of these 20,955 children, a total of 722 children were referred with unaided visual acuity less than 6/12 in any eye. Among these referred children, parents in the age group of 5–9 years and children between 10 and 15 years underwent interviews using LV Prasad Functional Visual Questionnaire?20 (LVP FVQ 20) and Indian Visual Functioning Questionnaire?33 (IND VFQ?33). Following this, multiple steps were undertaken that involved expert opinion for the removal of items on basis of zero variance and factor analysis along with calculation of Cronbach’s alpha. Results: A Cronbach’ alpha of 0.834 was calculated for the younger age group and 0.931 for the higher age group of children. Conclusion: A new robust age?appropriate questionnaire was developed and it was observed that there was a significant change in median score (that was derived for various domains after calculating the median for the items in various domains asked pre? and post?intervention in the form of glasses or surgery) for quality of visual function in the visually impaired children. A significant change in functional vision of visually impaired children (P < 0.005) was observed in both age groups