Development and validation of a functional dyspepsia-related quality of life (FD-QOL) scale in South Korea.
BACKGROUND
Quality of life (QOL) in patients with functional dyspepsia in South Korea has never been studied, mostly due to the lack of a psychometrically validated disease-specific instrument for measuring the QOL. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a QOL scale for patients with functional dyspepsia.


METHODS
A Functional Dyspepsia-Related QOL (FD-QOL) scale was developed and validated as follows: item generation, pilot test, and psychometric test. Patients with functional dyspepsia (n = 220) were recruited from seven university hospitals. The participants were asked to complete the preliminary item-generated FD-QOL, the Short Form-36 (SF-36), and the Index of Dyspepsia Symptoms-Korean (IDS-K). The data were analyzed using factor analysis, correlation, anova, and Cronbach's alpha.


RESULTS
Twenty-three items were generated based upon content validity. Factor analysis extracted a four-factor solution, and two items were deleted because they were not loaded significantly on any factor. The FD-QOL was correlated with the SF-36 subscales, of which scores were differentiated according to the levels of dyspepsia symptoms. Cronbach's alpha of the FD-QOL was 0.94.


CONCLUSIONS
The FD-QOL scale is a rapid and easily applicable instrument with excellent psychometric properties of content, factorial, convergent, and known-groups validity, and internal consistency reliability in Korean patients with functional dyspepsia.
Lee
Eun-Hyun
EH
Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea. ehlee@ajou.ac.kr
Hahm
Ki-Baik
KB
Lee
Jun Haeng
JH
Park
Jong-Jae
JJ
Lee
Dong Ho
DH
Kim
Seong Kook
SK
Choi
Seok Reyol
SR
Lee
Soo Teik
ST
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004415:Dyspepsia / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires