The development and Assessment on the general quality of life intrument for Chinese people / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To develop a general quality of life (QOL) instrument for Chinese in accordance with the Chinese culture and to assess its reliability, validity and sensitivity.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A 35-item QOL questionnaire(QOL-35) was developed with reference to the World Health Organization QOL questionnaire(WHO-100) and the 36-item medical outcomes study on short-form health status(SF-36). Thirty five items were divided into six domains (general, physical, independent, psychological, social, environment) and one item on QOL transition. The reliability of QOL-35 was assessed by a test-retest survey among 127 adults with an interval of 24-72 hours. The internal consistency and validity were evaluated by a survey on 135 adults from outpatients or general population, using QOL-35, WHO-100 and SF-36. The adaptability was assessed by application to 1356 community-based samples in Beijing.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>(1)Test-retest reliability of QOL-35 weighted Kappa indexes for items were from 0.86 to 1.00. Intraclass correlation coefficients were from 0.68 to 0.94 for domains, and 0.94 for total score. (2) On internal consistency Cronbach's Alphas were 0.93, 0.97 and 0.89 for QO1-35, WHO-100 and SF-36. (3)On construct validity. The accumulated proportions of variances of the preceding seven factors were 66.5%, 50.3% and 65.3% for QOL-35, WHO-100 and SF-36. (4) On criterion validity. Spearman correlation coefficients of total QOL score of QOL-35 with those of WHO-100 and SF-36 were 0.805 and 0.745. (5)The rates of chronic diseases were 53.1%, 33.1%, 26.4% and 25.1% from first to fourth quantile of the total QOL scores of QOL-35(P<0.05). (6)Cronbach's Alpha was from 0.68 to 0.93 in 135 subjects, and from 0.71 to 0.91 in 1356 individuals of natural population.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The QOL-35 instrument satisfied test-retest reliability and was highly correlated with WHO-100 and SF-36, having fewer items but better construction validity, better internal consistency, and better discrimination ability. We suggested that QOL-35 be used as a replicable tool to assess quality of life in the Chinese general population.</p>