Validation of the Kidney Disease Quality of Life-Short Form questionnaire in kidney transplant patients.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to determine the basic psychometric properties, reliability, and validity of the Kidney Disease Quality of Life-Short Form (KDQOL-SF) questionnaire in kidney transplant patients.


METHODS
The reliability and validity of the instrument were determined in 418 kidney transplant patients followed in a single outpatient transplant centre.


RESULTS
Internal consistency of all the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) domains was very good, and the Cronbach's alpha value was above .70 for all but three of the disease-specific subscales. We found significant, moderate to strong negative correlations between most of the KDQOL-SF domains and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scores. Finally, substantial differences in KDQOL-SF scores were seen between groups of transplanted patients who were expected to be clinically different, supporting the discriminant validity of the KDQOL-SF instrument.


CONCLUSIONS
We propose that the KDQOL-SF is a reliable and valid tool and most of its subscales can be used to assess health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in kidney transplant patients and to compare HRQOL between different end stage renal disease (ESRD) patient populations.
Barotfi
Szabolcs
S
Institute of Behavioral Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
Molnar
Miklos Zs
MZ
Almasi
Csilla
C
Kovacs
Agnes Zs
AZ
Remport
Adam
A
Szeifert
Lilla
L
Szentkiralyi
Andras
A
Vamos
Eszter
E
Zoller
Rezso
R
Eremenco
Sonya
S
Novak
Marta
M
Mucsi
Istvan
I
D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires