Development and validation of a short version of the Sarcopenia Quality of Life questionnaire: the SF-SarQoL

Abstract

Purpose To facilitate the measurement of quality of life in sarcopenia, we set out to reduce the number of items in the previously validated Sarcopenia Quality of Life (SarQoL®) questionnaire, and to evaluate the clinimetric properties of this new short form. Methods The item reduction process was carried out in two phases. First, information was gathered through item-impact scores from older people (n = 1950), a Delphi method with sarcopenia experts, and previously published clinimetric data. In the second phase, this information was presented to an expert panel that decided which of the items to include in the short form. The newly created SFSarQoL was then administered to older, community-dwelling participants who previously participated in the SarcoPhAge study. We examined discriminative power, internal consistency, construct validity, test–retest reliability, structural validity and examined item parameters with a graded response model (IRT). Results The questionnaire was reduced from 55 to 14 items, a 75% reduction. A total of 214 older, community-dwelling people were recruited for the validation study. The clinimetric evaluation showed that the SF-SarQoL® can discriminate on sarcopenia status [EWGSOP2 criteria; 34.52 (18.59–43.45) vs. 42.86 (26.56–63.69); p = 0.043], is internally consistent (α = 0.915, ω = 0.917) and reliable [ICC = 0.912 (0.847–0.942)]. A unidimensional model was fitted (CFI = 0.978; TLI = 0.975; RMSEA = 0.108, 90% CI 0.094–0.123; SRMR = 0.055) with no misfitting items and good response category separation. Conclusions A new, 14-item, short form version of the Sarcopenia Quality of Life questionnaire has been developed and shows good clinimetric properties.

Spanish translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the SarQoL®: a specific health-related quality of life questionnaire for sarcopenia

“…The updated definition of the EWGSOP2 [ 3 ] tries to overcome this problem by stating that a person with low muscle strength has probable sarcopenia, and in such patients, the Spanish version of SarQoL has in fact shown to be able to accurately measure quality of life. In fact, a short version of SarQoL has recently been published, also focused on low muscle strength, demonstrating excellent discrimination power comparing probable sarcopenia versus no sarcopenia according to EWGSOP2 criteria [ 51 ].…”

“…However, in other validation studies of the scale (such as the original, English or Romanian) the target number of 50 sarcopenic was not reached either, and they did obtain discriminative power. Concerning the number of sarcopenic participants in the sample, the recently published short version of the original SarQoL has also been validated with a low number of participants with confirmed sarcopenia [ 51 ]. The scale validation sample sizes are generally similar to ours, so it is unlikely that increasing the sample size would change the results.…”

Evaluation of the sarcopenia quality of life (SarQoL) questionnaire in community dwelling outpatient postmenopausal hungarian women

“…Although the discriminative power of the overall SarQoL questionnaire score has been validated by most studies, the results obtained for individual domains have been heterogenous. During the validation of the original French SarQoL questionnaire and later the Dutch, Lithuanian, Russian, Greek and Turkish versions, scores for all the individual 7 domains were significantly lower in the sarcopenic patients as compared to their non-sarcopenic counterparts [ 25 , 28 , 31 , 33 , 39 ]. In other validation studies, for the English version D3, D6, and D7; for the Romanian version D4 and D6; for the Polish version D4, D6 and D7; for the Ukrainian version D2 and D6; for the Spanish study by Fabrega-Cuadros et al D2, for the Chinese version D6; and for the Spanish study by Montero-Errasquin et al D2, D3, D6 and D7 domain scores were not significantly lower in subjects with sarcopenia [ 26 , 27 , 29 , 34 , 36 , 38 , 41 ].…”

Evaluating quality of life in frailty: applicability and clinimetric properties of the SarQoL® questionnaire

“…This is performed by comparing the questionnaire with other questionnaires (or subscales of) that should, in theory, measure the same construct (convergent validity) or a different construct (divergent validity) 37,38 . In this study, we utilized the same eight hypotheses on the strength of association between the overall QoL score of the SarQoL questionnaire and domains of the SF‐36 and EQ‐5D that were used in previous validations 13–19,33 The test–retest reliability of the questionnaire shows whether the scores measured by the SarQoL questionnaire remain stable between multiple administrations, on the condition that the participants' health state also remains stable 37,38 .…”

“…It has been validated for use with sarcopenic, older, community-dwelling participants in multiple languages and has consistently been shown to be a valid and reliable instrument, as well as responsive to changes in QoL. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Multiple authors have argued that the conceptual frameworks of frailty and age-related sarcopenia overlap substantially, notably on the similar clinical manifestations used to diagnose the two conditions. The slowness indicator in the Fried criteria for frailty and the low gait speed indicator used to characterize muscle function in sarcopenia are one area of overlap between the two conditions.…”