[Development and a psychometric evaluation of cardiovascular disease-specific quality of life scale for Koreans].
OBJECTIVE
Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with cardiovascular disease in Korea has rarely been studied, mostly due to the lack of a psychometrically validated disease-specific instrument. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a cardiovascular specific-HRQOL questionnaire (CD-QOL).


METHODS
The CD-QOL was developed and validated as follows; item generation, pilot study, and psychometric tests. Patients were recruited from three-university hospitals. The patients were asked to complete the preliminary questionnaire comprising the content-validated items, SF-36, and CES-D. The NYHA and KASI classifications were used to classify the functional performance of the patients. The data was analyzed using correlation, factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, multitrait/multi-item matrix, ANOVA, and Cronbach's alpha.


RESULTS
Preliminarily, thirty-nine items were generated. Factor analysisextracted a five-factor solution with a total of twenty-two items. One item was deleted based upon the MDS. The remaining items were moderately correlated with the subscales of the SF-36 and associated with depression measured with the CES-D. The mean scores of patients in NYHA and KASI class I were significantly higher than those in NYHA and KASI class II or/and III, which suggested patients with better functional performance were likely to have a better HRQOL. Cronbach's alphas of the total and subscales were all greater than 0.70.


CONCLUSIONS
The CD-QOL is a easily applicable instrument with excellent psychometric properties of content, criterion, factorial, convergent, and known-groups validity, and internal consistency reliability in Korean patients with cardiovascular disease.
Lee
Eun Hyun
EH
Graduate School of Public Health, Ajou University, Korea. ehlee@ajou.ac.kr
Tahk
Seong Jai
SJ
Shin
Jun Han
JH
Lee
Young Whee
YW
Song
Rhayun
R
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000451:nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires