Health related quality of life in 3 and 4 year old children and their parents: preliminary findings about a new questionnaire.
BACKGROUND
Few measures of health related quality of life exist for use with preschool aged children. The objective of this study was to assess reliability and validity of a new multidimensional generic measure of health-related quality of life developed for use with preschool children.


METHODS
Cross-sectional survey sent to parents as their child turned 3 1/2 years of age. The setting was the province of British Columbia, Canada. Patients included all babies admitted to tertiary level neonatal intensive care units (NICU) at birth over a 16-month period, and a consecutive sample of healthy babies. The main outcome measure was a new full-length questionnaire consisting of 3 global items and 10 multi-item scales constructed to measure the physical and emotional well-being of toddlers and their families.


RESULTS
The response rate was 67.9%. 91% (NICU) and 84% (healthy baby) of items correlated with their own domain above the recommended standard (0.40). 97% (NICU) and 87% (healthy baby) of items correlated more highly (> or = 2 S.E.) with their hypothesized scale than with other scales. Cronbach's alpha coefficients varied between.80 and.96. Intra-class correlation coefficients were above.70. Correlations between scales in the new measure and other instruments were moderate to large, and were stronger than between non-related domains. Statistically significant differences in scale scores were observed between the NICU and healthy baby samples, as well as between those diagnosed with a health problem requiring medical attention in the past year versus those with no health problems.


CONCLUSIONS
Preliminary results indicate the new measure demonstrates acceptable reliability and construct validity in a sample of children requiring NICU care and a sample of healthy children. However, further development work is warranted.
Klassen
Anne F
AF
Centre for Community Child Health Research, L408, 4480 Oak Street, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3V4, Canada. afk@interchange.ubc.ca
Landgraf
Jeanne M
JM
Lee
Shoo K
SK
Barer
Morris
M
Raina
Parminder
P
Chan
Herbert W P
HW
Matthew
Derek
D
Brabyn
David
D
D000328:Adult; D001955:British Columbia; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007363:Intensive Care Units, Neonatal; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires