Health related quality of life of Iranian children with type 1 diabetes: reliability and validity of the Persian version of the PedsQL™ Generic Core Scales and Diabetes Module

Abstract

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to measure health related quality of life (HRQOL) in Iranian children with type 1 diabetes and to test the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the PedsQL™ 3.0 Diabetes Module.MethodsParticipants were 94 children and adolescents diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for at least 3 months in Shiraz, southern Iran. Convergent, discriminant, and construct validity of the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the PedsQL™ 3.0 Diabetes Module were assessed. Moreover, internal consistency was checked by Cronbach's alpha coefficient.ResultsCronbach's α for the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the PedsQL™ 3.0 Diabetes Module was greater than 0.80 both in the child self-report and parent proxy-report. Both generic and disease-specific versions of the PedsQL showed excellent convergent and acceptable discriminant validity except for 'diabetes symptoms' subscale in the child self-report of the disease-specific module. Moreover, Iranian children with diabetes, as compared with other countries, had lower HRQOL scores.ConclusionsWhile this study showed that the Persian version of the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales has good psychometric properties in children with type 1 diabetes, the PedsQL™ 3.0 Diabetes Module needs some modifications to be used as a disease-specific quality of life (QOL) measure. Also, more support should be provided for the care of Iranian children with diabetes.

Health-related quality of life in a group of Egyptian children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes: relationship to microvascular complications

“…In the current study, negative statistically significant correlations were found between HRQOL domains with demographic and clinical characteristics (age, disease duration, BMI, SBP, and DBP), and positive statistically significant correlations with socioeconomic status (especially maternal education, p = 0.019) and age of onset of diabetes (for all PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scale and only for the treatment adherence of the PedsQL™ 3.0 Diabetic module) were illuminated in the studied diabetic patients. As regards the effect of disease duration on HRQOL, current results were in accord with the studies of Jafari et al 2011, Hilliard et al 2013, Abdul-Rasoul et al 2013 Costa and Vieira 2015. The negative impact of long diabetes duration on quality of life might result from significant deterioration in glycemic control, deterioration in treatment adherence over this time, and occurrence of long-term diabetes complications that reduce person's perception of well-being and productivity.…”

Item and response-category functioning of the Persian version of the KIDSCREEN-27: Rasch partial credit model

“…Just as in the case with the PedsQL™ 4.0 on Iranian children with chronic conditions [16,17], this study showed that the Persian version of the KIDSCREEN-27 has a good internal consistency, and excellent convergent and discriminant validity. However, although the PCM showed that all the items contributed adequately to their own domain, Rasch analysis revealed that the number of response categories should be reduced from five to four in the Persian version of the KIDSCREEN-27.…”

Testing parent dyad interchangeability in the parent proxy-report of PedsQL™ 4.0: a differential item functioning analysis

“…All the students in the chosen classes were automatically taken as samples of the study in the second stage. The Persian version of the PedsQL TM 4.0, translated and validated previously in Iran [23,24], generated a survey that was filled in by the school children and their mothers and fathers. A trained researcher explained the objective of the survey to children in each classroom and distributed the informed consent forms and questionnaires among the students to take home for their mothers and fathers.…”