title: Validation of the World Health Organization quality of life instrument in patients with HIV infection.
abstract: We studied the reliability and validity of the World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL) assessment instrument in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. WHOQOL-BREF was used to assess 136 HIV-infected outpatients. The results were analyzed and compared with data from 213 healthy persons. The Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency ranged from 0.74 to 0.85 across domains in HIV-infected patients. The test-retest reliability ranged from 0.64 to 0.79 across domains at average 4-week retest interval. Factor analysis identified four major factors: social, psychological, environment, and physical, consistent with the four domains of the instrument. The scores of all four domains correlated positively with self-evaluated health status and happiness (r range: 0.52-0.60 and 0.55-0.73 across domains, respectively), and correlated negatively with the number and severity of symptoms (r range: -0.40 to -0.47 and -0.41 to -0.52, respectively). The scores of physical, psychological and social domains, but not the environment domain, discriminated between healthy persons and HIV-infected patients (all p < 0.01). We conclude that the WHOQOL-BREF can be a useful quality-of-life instrument in patients with HIV infection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.
authors.forename: C T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: P C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Hsiung
authors.forename: C F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: M Y
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011788:Quality of Life; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013624:Taiwan; D014944:World Health Organization