The DISABKIDS generic quality of life instrument showed cross-cultural validity.
OBJECTIVE
The aim was to test the performance of a cross-culturally developed disease-generic quality of life (QoL) measure for children with chronic diseases in a multinational clinical study.


METHODS
The study was conducted in pediatric hospitals across seven European countries in a sample of 1,153 children with seven chronic conditions, aged 8-16. The design included test and retest on child, parent, and clinical measures concerning health status, functioning, and quality of life.


RESULTS
The condition-generic QoL measure showed satisfactory item and scale performance, as well as structural validity across the seven countries. There was a high agreement between the child and proxy assessment across the different countries in all subscales of the condition-generic instrument, except for socioemotional dimensions in some countries. Gender, age, and severity-adjusted covariance analyses showed significant country differences in QoL. The discriminative potential of the condition-generic measure to distinguish between clinical characteristics was higher than that of a generic measures.


CONCLUSIONS
The psychometric performance of both items and scales of the DISABKIDS condition oriented measure was good across cultures, despite a range of cross-cultural differences. The condition-generic measure performs better in discriminating with respect to clinical characteristics than the generic measures; however, results need replication in representative studies.
Schmidt
Silke
S
Center of Psychosocial Medicine, Eppendorf Institute and Clinic for Medical Psychology, University Hospital of Hamburg, Martinistr. 52, Haus S35, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany. sischmidt@uke.uni-hamburg.de
Debensason
David
D
Mühlan
Holger
H
Petersen
Corinna
C
Power
Mick
M
Simeoni
Marie Claude
MC
Bullinger
Monika
M
D000293:Adolescent; D001249:Asthma / Q000534:rehabilitation; D002648:Child; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D004644:Emotions; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires