Title
Measuring health-related quality of life in children: The development of the TACQOL parent form
Author
Vogels, T.
Verrips, G.H.W.
Verloove-Vanhorick, S.P.
Fekkes, M.
Kamphuis, R.P.
Koopman, H.M.
Theunissen, N.C.M.
Wit, J.M.
TNO Preventie en Gezondheid
Publication year
1998
Abstract
Health-related quality of life (HRQoL), conceptualized as patients' own evaluations of their health status, is an important criterion in evaluating health and health care and in the treatment of individual patients. Until now, few systematic attempts have been made to develop instruments to assess the HRQoL of children using such a conceptualization. This article describes the conceptualization and results of a study aiming to develop such an instrument for children aged 6-15 years using their parents as a proxy. The feasibility and psychometric performance of the instrument were evaluated in a study of 77 patients of the paediatric out-patient clinic of Leiden University Hospital. For each of the a priori-defined domains, a parent form scale could be constructed with satisfactory reliability and moderate correlations with the other scales. Only some of the parents indicating health status problems also signalled negative reactions to these problems. This is, in our view, a strong argument for the distinction between health status and quality of life (QoL). The correlation coefficients between the parent form and a children's questionnaire were low. Overall, the psychometric performance of the TACQOL parent form looks promising, which suggests that this instrument - with some modifications - can indeed be used to assess group differences in HRQoL in children. The results, however, should be replicated in larger samples, currently under study. The relation between parents' proxy reports on the HRQoL of their children and children's self-reports needs further investigation.
Subject
Health
Children
HRQoL
TACQoL
Child health care
Concept formation
Parental behavior
Perception
Rating scale
Reliability
Self report
Adolescent
Evaluation Studies
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Female
Health Status
Humans
Male
Parents
Pilot Projects
Psychometrics
Quality of Life
Questionnaires
Reproducibility of Results
Research Design
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:81a7445b-c76d-46e0-81d6-ae22056db19d
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1008848218806
TNO identifier
234575
ISSN
0962-9343
Source
Quality of Life Research, 7 (5), 457-465
Document type
article