Development and Validation of Quality of Life Tool among Chemotherapy Patients: A Pilot Trial

Abstract

Introduction: Quality of Life (QoL) is a main alarm of patients with life-threatening cancer. Symptoms have an effect on their QoL. There are many standardised tools which measure the QoL among cancer patients. But there is no specific questionnaire or tool available to evaluate the chemotherapy patients in Indian context. Aim: To develop and validate a QoL tool for chemotherapy patients. Materials and Methods: This was a sequential exploratory mixed-method study, pilot. In qualitative stage, the data was gathered by involving in detail interview of 15 chemotherapy patients. Interview data were analysed by utilising conventional content analysis method and themes, and subthemes were formed. Based on it, a pool of items for the questionnaire was prepared. In quantitative stage, psychometric properties of the questionnaire were assessed by using face, content and construct validity. The reliability of the tool was evaluated by internal consistency and Cronbach’s alpha. Overall 15 patients participated in qualitative and quantitative phase separately. Results: At the end of phase I, a draft of 104 questionnaires was formed. In phase 2, a specialist panel reviewed 84 items relevant with the domains and 20 items were erased on the basis of expert opinion, Item Content Validity Index (I-CVI) and Scale Content Validity Index (S-CVI). At this time, 84-item tool were given to 15 chemotherapy patients. In view of the patient’s opinion, researcher drew a screen plot based on Eigen value of above 1. These four domains showed 53.846% of the total variance. Last 84 items were scrutinised as per specific domain. The end draft had a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.932. Conclusion: The newly develop tool will help the chemotherapy patients and healthcare team to evaluate the QoL. This QoL tool will also impact the cancer treatment and implement strategies accordingly.