Development of quality of life instrument for urban poor in the northeast of Thailand.
BACKGROUND
Measuring the quality of life is important for evaluation and prediction of life and social care needs. To evaluate Quality of Life (QOL) in an urban poor population in northeast of Thailand, the Urban Poor Quality of Life (UPQOL) instrument was developed


OBJECTIVE
To develop an initial instrument to measure urban poor QOL.


METHODS
The development was started with literature review and investigated in urban poor communities. The results were transformed into the items required to build a structured questionnaire. Five hundred twenty three subjects, representatives of urban poor, were selected to test this instrument. Descriptive statistics described feature of items and the samples, exploratory factor analysis conducted the items score, and confirmatory factor analysis conducted the construct validity.


RESULTS
The result found that the UPQOL instrument consisted of nine domains (education, income and employment, environment, health, infrastructure, security and safety, shelter and housing, civil society and political, and human rights domains) with egien value rank from 1.5 to 4.2 and 61 items with the factor loading rank from 0.41 to 0.82. The internal consistency was 0.92. The correlation between items to domain ranged from 0.30 to 0.72 and domains to overall QOL ranged from 0.27 to 0.84. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the structure fit all domains well. Domains and overall structure were good with CFI (> 0.95). The internal consistency value ranged from 0.73-0.93. UPQOL scores were able to discriminate groups of subjects with differences levels of QOL.


CONCLUSIONS
The UPQOL instrument is conceptually valid. The results support good validity and reliability. It forms the basis for future testing and application in other settings.
Faculty of Public Health, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand.
Phrutthinun
P
Surit
Wongsa
W
Laohasiriwong
Pattara
P
Sanchaisuriya
Frank Perter
FP
Schelp
D000328:Adult; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011203:Poverty; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013785:Thailand; D014505:Urban Population