Validation and Reliability of PedsQL in Healthy Malaysian Pediatric Population

Abstract

This study aimed at examining the validity and reliability of the translated PedsQL instruments in healthy Malaysian pediatric population. Study population consisted of children aged 5-7 and 8 -12 years as well as adolescent aged 13- 18 years recruited from the continently selected primary and secondary schools located in Klang valley area. All participants were requested to obtain parental consent. The participants must possess the ability to read and understand the questionnaire independently in any one of the languages, namely English, Malay, Tamil and Mandarin. Both forward and backward translation process was adopted in translating the instruments. A harmonization meeting involving all the translators and researchers was then held to review, reconcile and harmonize the translated instruments. Cronbach’s alpha was used to demonstrate the internal reliability of the instruments with a 2-weeks period. The predictive strength of the parent proxy report on the child self report was studied using the predictive validity. The Cronbach’s alpha values for child self report in all versions of PedsQL were found to be at least 0.70 while the values were reported to be at least 0.80 for the parent proxy report. Moderate correlation between the child self report and parent proxy report was observed for children aged 5-7 and 8-12 years, while the correlation was moderate to high for children aged 13-18 years. The findings in this study demonstrated the Malay, Mandarin and Tamil PedsQL possessed acceptable internal reliability and predictive validity.