The World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument for people with intellectual and physical disabilities (WHOQOL-Dis): evidence of validity of the Brazilian version.

Juliana Bredemeier,Marcelo P Fleck,Marilyn Agranonik,Tatiana Spalding Perez,Gabriela Peretti Wagner

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-538

Abstract

BackgroundThe number of people with disabilities in Brazil and worldwide has grown substantially in recent decades. Cross-cultural quality of life instruments can be helpful in the development of interventions designed to meet the needs of this population and contribute to rational allocation of resources. This study sought to provide evidence of validity and reliability the Brazilian Portuguese version of WHOQOL-Dis-D (a cross-cultural, multicentre instrument developed by the WHOQOL-Group for the assessment of quality of life in persons with physical disability – PD) and WHOQOL-Dis-ID (for persons with intellectual disability – ID).MethodsClassical psychometric methods were used to conduct independent analyses of the PD and ID samples. Criterion groups were established for analysis of construct validity. Concurrent validity was assessed in relation to SWLS and BDI-II scores; discriminant validity, in relation to WHODAS-II. Cronbach alpha was used to test the instrument scales and subscales for reliability. The ID subgroup was retested, and test-retest reliability assessed by means of intraclass correlation coefficients and paired Student’s t-test.ResultsA total of 162 (98 females) people with PD and 156 (55 females) people with ID participated in the study. Cronbach alpha was satisfactory across practically all domains and factors in the PD subsample. In IDs, most factors or domains had coefficients higher than 0.70, but four subscales exhibited less satisfactory performance. Evidence of construct and concurrent validity and reliability were obtained.ConclusionsThe analyses presented herein provide satisfactory evidence of the validity and reliability of the instrument and corroborated the factor structure revealed during cross-cultural research. Further studies with larger sample sizes are required to obtain additional evidence of validity and reliability.

Highlights

The number of people with disabilities in Brazil and worldwide has grown substantially in recent decades
The primary objective of this study is to present the Brazilian Portuguese version of WHOQOL-Dis and provide evidence of its validity in and reliability
The present study sought to present evidence of validity and reliability of a cross-cultural instrument developed for the assessment of quality of life (QoL) among people with disabilities, as defined by World Health Organization (WHO) [1]

Summary

Introduction

The number of people with disabilities in Brazil and worldwide has grown substantially in recent decades. Even though this percentage may be overestimated due to possible problems in the Census data collection, the number of people with disabilities is growing as population is shifting toward an inverted age structure — a phenomenon already observed in Europe that means that over the following decades the number of people over the age of 40 will exceed that of younger individuals [4] This context has generated growing research interest into the living conditions of persons with disabilities and their opinions on a variety of aspects, and has prompted the development of public policies to support health, well-being, and inclusion. The matter of the term disability not being one widely spread in Brazil had an impact on data collection which we explain further

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