title: The Functional Living Index-Cancer is a reliable and valid instrument in Chinese cancer patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the linguistic and psychometric properties of the Functional Living Index-Cancer (FLIC) in assessing the quality of life of Chinese cancer patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  The English FLIC was translated into Traditional Chinese by the standard forward-backward procedure. After cognitive debriefing, a Traditional Chinese FLIC was administered to 500 cancer patients in a major public hospital in Hong Kong. Of which, 200 were invited to complete the questionnaire in 2 weeks. To identify a scale structure appropriate to Chinese, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on two randomly split halves of the sample.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified five scales of the Traditional Chinese FLIC which assess the physical, psychological, hardship, nausea and social aspects. These five scales and the overall scale demonstrated satisfactory fit and had the alpha coefficient ranged from 0.68 to 0.92. The intra-class correlation coefficient ranged from 0.67 to 0.88. In addition, all FLIC scales were negatively associated with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status and, also except for the psychological scale, had lower scores in patients who were treated by chemotherapy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Traditional Chinese FLIC is an appropriate health indicator for Chinese cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, School of Nursing, The University of Hong Kong, 4/F, William MW Mong Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, dytfong@hku.hk.
authors.forename: Daniel Y T
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: Fong
authors.forename: Alvina H K
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Stewart Y
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Tung
authors.forename: Janet Y H
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Y M
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Cynthia R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.forename: Y B
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Cheung
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D016522:Oncology Service, Hospital; D010045:Outpatients / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000592:standards*; D011788:Quality of Life; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards