Abstract
BackgroundThe importance of evaluating the outcomes of health care from the standpoint of the patient is now widely recognized. The purpose of this study is to develop and test a Japanese version of the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI VFQ-25).MethodsA Japanese version was developed with a previously standardized method. The questionnaire and optional items were completed by 245 patients with cataracts, glaucoma, or age-related macular degeneration, by 110 others before and after cataract surgery, and by a reference group (n = 31). We computed rates of missing data, measured reproducibility and internal consistency reliability, and tested for convergent and discriminant validity, concurrent validity, known-groups validity, factor structure, and responsiveness to change.ResultsBased on information from the participants, some items were changed to 2-step items (asking if an activity was done, and if it was done, then asking how difficult it was). The near-vision and distance-vision subscales each had 1 item that was endorsed by very few participants, so these items were replaced with items that were optional in the English version. For example, more than 60% of participants did not drive, so the driving question was excluded. Reliability and validity were adequate for all subscales except driving, ocular pain, color vision, and peripheral vision. With cataract surgery, most scores improved by at least 20 points.ConclusionWith minor modifications from the English version, the Japanese NEI VFQ-25 can give reliable, valid, responsive data on vision-related quality of life, for group-level comparisons or for tracking therapeutic outcomes.
Highlights
The importance of evaluating the outcomes of health care from the standpoint of the patient is widely recognized
The resulting 51-item questionnaire is known as the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI VFQ) [7,8]
We developed a Japanese version of the NEI VFQ-25 (Appendix [see additional file 1]). and evaluated its psychometric characteristics
Summary
The importance of evaluating the outcomes of health care from the standpoint of the patient is widely recognized. HRQOL refers to health status in the physical, mental, and social domains, and to the effect of a disease, its symptoms, and treatments on patients' lives Conventional clinical measures such as visual acuity and visual field assessments do not fully capture the influence of visual disability on daily visual functioning and on abilities to perform activities of daily living that are valued by patients. The VFQ-25 has adequate reliability and validity, and subscale scores from the shorter form correlate highly with scores on the original long version This questionnaire has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, and German, and validated [10,11,12,13], and it has been widely used to describe the HRQOL of patients with ocular disease and to assess the treatment of ocular disease [14,15,16,17,18,19,20]
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