A questionnaire for rating health-related quality of life
Article Category: Original scientific article
Online veröffentlicht: 20. Okt. 2021
Seitenbereich: 260 - 268
Eingereicht: 17. März 2021
Akzeptiert: 26. Juli 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjph-2021-0035
Schlüsselwörter
© 2021 National Institute of Public Health, Slovenia, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Background
Translations of instruments for measuring quality of life developed in certain, mostly more developed, parts of the world usually do not cover regionally specific aspects of health-related quality of life, even after transcultural validation. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a reliable questionnaire in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages suitable for measuring health-related quality of life in adults.
Methods
The study was of a cross-sectional type, assessing the reliability and validity of a newly developed questionnaire for measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in adults residing in western Balkan states (WB-HRQoL). It was conducted on a sample of 489 adults from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Montenegro, with a mean age of 52.2±14.4 years and a male/female ratio of 195/294 (39.9%/60.1%).
Result
The definitive version of the WB-HRQoL scale with 19 items showed very good reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha 0.905. The scale was temporally stable, and satisfactory results were obtained for divergent and convergent validity tests. Exploratory factorial analysis brought to the surface four domains of health-related quality of life, namely the physical, psychical, social, and environmental.
Conclusion
The WB-HRQoL scale is a reliable and valid generic instrument for measuring HRQoL that takes into account the cultural specifics of the western Balkan region.