title: Development and evaluation of a short version of the quality of life questionnaire for dementia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  There are many quality of life (QOL) instruments for evaluating dementia patients. The QOL questionnaire for Dementia (QOL-D) is one of such instruments and a validated objective measure of QOL for patients with dementia. It comprises 31 items encompassing six domains. However, with 31 items, its length is a disadvantage. The purpose of this study was to develop a short version of QOL-D (short QOL-D).
  
  
  METHODS
  We used data from two studies. The participants were 264 inpatients with dementia in the first sample and 395 outpatients at a memory clinic in the second sample. We used maximum likelihood factor analysis with promax rotation to reduce the number of items.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We produced a nine-item version of QOL-D (short QOL-D) with positive (six items) and negative (three items) dimensions. The correlation coefficients of short and total versions of QOL-D were 0.892-0.918 for total scores, 0.903-0.936 for positive dimension scores, and 0.788-0.837 for negative dimension scores. Total short QOL-D scores showed a significant correlation to the Geriatric Depression Scale score and the apathy score of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The short QOL-D produced results comparable with that of the full version. Reducing the number of items may make administration of the instrument easier.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Seishi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Terada
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Etsuko
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oshima
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Chikako
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ikeda
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hayashi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Osamu
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Yokota
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry,Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine,Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences,Okayama,Japan.
authors.forename: Yosuke
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Uchitomi
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D011580:Psychological Techniques; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires