The DISABKIDS generic quality of life instrument showed cross-cultural validity

Abstract

Objective The aim was to test the performance of a cross-culturally developed disease-generic quality of life (QoL) measure for children with chronic diseases in a multinational clinical study. Study Design and Setting The study was conducted in pediatric hospitals across seven European countries in a sample of 1,153 children with seven chronic conditions, aged 8–16. The design included test and retest on child, parent, and clinical measures concerning health status, functioning, and quality of life. Results The condition-generic QoL measure showed satisfactory item and scale performance, as well as structural validity across the seven countries. There was a high agreement between the child and proxy assessment across the different countries in all subscales of the condition-generic instrument, except for socioemotional dimensions in some countries. Gender, age, and severity-adjusted covariance analyses showed significant country differences in QoL. The discriminative potential of the condition-generic measure to distinguish between clinical characteristics was higher than that of a generic measures. Conclusion The psychometric performance of both items and scales of the DISABKIDS condition oriented measure was good across cultures, despite a range of cross-cultural differences. The condition-generic measure performs better in discriminating with respect to clinical characteristics than the generic measures; however, results need replication in representative studies.