Validation of Quality of Life Index-Cancer among Korean Patients with Cancer / 간호학회지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to validate Quality of Life Index-Cancer (Q.L.I.-C) developed by Ferrans (1990) among Korean cancer patients. METHOD: This study design was exploratory factor analysis methodology. Q.L.I.-C was translated into Korean and reverse-translated into English. The subjects were 357 Korean patients with various cancers. Data were collected by questionnaires from May to August, 2000 and was analyzed by descriptive statistics, Principal Component Analysis for construct validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for reliability. RESULT: The range of factor loadings was .446~.841. The explained variance from the 5 extracted factors was 63.7% of the total variance. The first factor 'family' was 35.5%, and 'health & physical functioning', 'psychological', 'spiritual', and 'economic' factors were 11.5%, 6.9%, 5.6%, and 4.2% respectively. Because of cultural difference between Americans and Koreans, certain items such as sexuality, job status, and education were deleted from the extraction of factors in this study. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .9253 among the 28 items. CONCLUSION: Q.L.I.-C could be applied in measuring quality of life of Korean cancer patients. It also recommend to do further studiesfor validation of Q.L.I.-C American and Korean versions relating to cultural differences.