Development of a quality of life questionnaire for 1-5-year-old children

This paper describes the development of a questionnaire for measuring Health Related Quality of Life in 1-5-year-old children. This study shows that the TAPQOL can be a good instrument to measure HRQoL in pre-school children, but more research is needed to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TAPQOL in different clinical populations.

Fekkes, M., Theunissen, N.C.M., Brugman, E., Veen, S., Verrips, E.G.H., Koopman, H.M., Vogels, T., Wit, J.M., & Verloove-Vanhorick, S.P. (2000). Development and psychometric evaluation of the TAPQOL: A health-related quality of life instrument for 1-5-year-old children. Quality of Life Research, 9(8), 961-972.

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Abstract

The 46-item TNO-AZL Pre-school children Quality of Life (TAPQOL) questionnaire was developed to meet the need for a reliable and valid instrument for measuring Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in pre-school children. HRQoL was defined as health status in 13 domains plus the emotional responses to problems in health status. The TAPQOL has to be filled in by the parents. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TAPQOL.
A sample of 121 parents of preterm children completed the TAPQOL questionnaire (response rate 88%) as well as 362 parents of children form the open population (response rate 60%). On the base of Cronbach’s alpha, item-rest correlation, and principal component analysis, the TAPQOL scales were constructed from the data of the preterm children sample.
The psychometric performance of these scales was evaluated for both the preterm children sample and the open population sample. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .66-.88 for the preterm children sample and from .26-.84 for the open population sample. The unidimensionality of the separate scales was confirmed by principal component analysis for both the preterm children sample and the open population sample. Pearson’s correlation coefficients between scales were on the average low. T-test analyses showed that very preterm children and children with chronic diseases had lower scores on the TAPQOL scales than healthy children, indicating a worse quality of life. This study shows that the TAPQOL can be a good instrument to measure HRQoL in pre-school children, but more research is needed to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TAPQOL in different clinical populations.

Keywords

health related quality of life, pre-school children, preterm birth, quality of life instruments, questionnaire, questionnaire development

Topic: Health Psychology
Code: N0851