Development and psychometric evaluation of a chronic liver disease-specific quality of life questionnaire.
OBJECTIVE
There has been no reliable and valid instrument to measure health-related quality of life for Asian patients with chronic liver disease. The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate a chronic liver disease-specific quality of life (CLD-QOL) questionnaire for Korean patients with chronic liver disease.


METHODS
Content-validated items were evaluated psychometrically in 271 patients with chronic liver disease recruited from seven university hospitals in Korea. The participants were asked to complete a preliminary questionnaire comprising the content-validated items and the Short Form-36 Health Survey. The Child-Pugh classification was used to classify the severity of liver cirrhosis.


RESULTS
Factor analysis extracted a five-factor solution from 27 preliminary items, which were generated by an expert panel and a pilot study, but factor and a multidimensional scaling analysis revealed that four items were not loaded significantly on any factor, suggesting that the four items might be heterogeneous. After deletion of these four items, a multiscaling analysis strongly supported item convergence and discriminant validity. The CLD-QOL was associated significantly with the Child-Pugh classification and the type of patient status (inpatient/outpatient) and was moderately correlated with the subscales of the Short Form-36 Health Survey. The values of Cronbach's alpha for the subscales of the novel CLD-QOL questionnaire were all greater than 0.70.


CONCLUSIONS
The novel CLD-QOL questionnaire we developed is an easily applicable tool that exhibits excellent psychometric properties for Korean patients with chronic liver disease. It is recommended for the CLD-QOL to apply for Asian patients with chronic liver disease.
Lee
Eun-Hyun
EH
Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea.
Cheong
Jae Youn
JY
Cho
Sung Won
SW
Hahm
Ki-Baik
KB
Kim
Hak Yang
HY
Park
Jong-Jae
JJ
Lee
Dong Ho
DH
Kim
Seong Kook
SK
Choi
Seok Reyol
SR
Lee
Soo Teik
ST
Moon
Seong Mi
SM
D044466:Asian People; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*