Validation of pediatric Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy: patient version 2 of “brain tumor survivor” for grade school patients aged 7–12 years

Abstract

We evaluated the reliability and validity of the Pediatric Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Childhood Brain Tumor Survivor version 2.0 (pedsFACT-BrS; patient version for grade school children aged 7-12 years). After translating and cross-culturally adapting it into Korean, the psychometric properties of the pedsFACT-BrS were evaluated in 148 childhood brain tumor survivors (mean age, 9.67 years). Pre-testing was performed in 25 patients. The pedsFACT-BrS showed good symptom coverage and overall user comprehension. Internal consistency was acceptable, with Cronbach's α coefficients ranging from 0.70 to 0.92. The pedsFACT-BrS also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validities when correlated with the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale and Kovacs' Children's Depression Scale. The pedsFACT-BrS showed good known-group validity and effectively differentiated between clinically distinct patient groups (patient vs. control groups, and among patients having different Karnofsky scores), but offered only partial discrimination of physical well-being (PWB) scores when patients were grouped by treatment type. Our results indicate that this instrument is reliable and valid and can be used to evaluate the quality of life of Korean childhood brain tumor survivors.