[Assessment of the transcultural equivalence of the Spanish version of the profile of quality of life for chronic patients (PECVEC)].
BACKGROUND
In this work the transcultural adaptation and validation of a quality of life questionnaire has been approached, taking into account its increasing interest and its practice considerations. The Profil der Lebensqualität Chronischkranker (PLC) is a German instrument and titled in Spanish. Perfil de Calidad de Vida para Enfermos Crónicos (PECVEC). The main goal of the present study is the assessment of the transcultural equivalence between the Spanish version and the original questionnaire version.


METHODS
Translations and back-translations from the original instrument, using bilingual personnel, were made. The most important goal of the study was to achieve the more accurate equivalence between the original version and the Spanish version of the questionnaire. The translations were discussed between the groups of investigators in Germany and Spain and finally adapted a pretest that showed good statistical results. The instrument was applied in two groups of subjects paired by sex and age and its validation was made.


RESULTS
The results of two studies (one German and other Spanish) are compared. In the Spanish study the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient (range: 0.39-0.97) and the factorial analysis of the items showed good internal consistency. Cronbach's Alpha was higher than 0.6 for all dimensions except for the scale of Social Well-Being (0.39) with an average value 0.72. The comparison between two factorial structures showed that both are similar statistically. The adapted version showed discriminant capacity between groups ("known group validity") and the final scores of quality of life were similar to the original version.


CONCLUSIONS
The adaptation process from the original version to the Spanish version has finished with a transcultural equivalence between both. This preliminary validation can be seen as an important starting point to increase, in this field, the number of instruments of assessment health-related quality of life in chronic patients in Spanish language.
Fernández-López
J A
JA
Area de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Publica, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Oviedo, Asturias.
Siegrist
J
J
Hernández-Mejía
R
R
Broer
M
M
Cueto-Espinar
A
A
D002908:Chronic Disease; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires