The Quality of Working Life Questionnaire for Cancer Survivors (QWLQ-CS): a Pre-test Study

Abstract

BackgroundReturning to and continuing work is important to many cancer survivors, but also represents a challenge. We know little about subjective work outcomes and how cancer survivors perceive being returned to work. Therefore, we developed the Quality of Working Life Questionnaire for Cancer Survivors (QWLQ-CS). Our aim was to pre-test the items of the initial QWLQ-CS on acceptability and comprehensiveness. In addition, item retention was performed by pre-assessing the relevance scores and response distributions of the items in the QWLQ-CS.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted after cancer survivors, who had returned to work, filled in the 102 items of the QWLQ-CS. To improve acceptability and comprehensiveness, the semi-structured interview inquired about items that were annoying, difficult, confusing, twofold or redundant. If cancer survivors had difficulty explaining their opinion or emotion about an item, the interviewer used verbal probing technique to investigate the cancer survivor’s underlying thoughts. The cancer survivors’ comments on the items were analysed, and items were revised accordingly. Decisions on item retention regarding the relevance of items and the response distributions were made by means of pre-set decision rules.ResultsThe 19 cancer survivors (53 % male) had a mean age of 51 ± 11 years old. They were diagnosed between 2009 and 2013 with lymphoma, leukaemia, prostate cancer, breast cancer, or colon cancer. Acceptability of the QWLQ-CS was good - none of the items were annoying - but 73 items were considered difficult, confusing, twofold or redundant. To improve acceptability, for instance, the authors replaced the phrase ‘disease’ with ‘health situation’ in several items. Consequently, comprehensiveness was improved by the authors rephrasing and adjusting items by adding clarifying words, such as ‘in the work situation’. The pre-assessment of the relevance scores resulted in a sufficient number of cancer survivors indicating the items as relevant to their quality of working life, and no evident indication for uneven response distributions. Therefore, all items were retained.ConclusionsThe 104 items of the preliminary QWLQ-CS were found relevant, acceptable and comprehensible by cancer survivors who have returned to work. The QWLQ-CS is now suitable for larger sample sizes of cancer survivors, which is necessary to test the psychometric properties of this questionnaire.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1440-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Quality of Working Life of cancer survivors: associations with health- and work-related variables

“…This questionnaire was developed in Dutch specifically for cancer survivors who are employed within an organization or self-employed. In this study, we collected data with the use of the preliminary version of the QWLQ-CS with 104 items [21]. Later on, we developed the final 23-item QWLQ-CS which proved to be reliable and valid for use at group level (de Jong et al, submitted for publication).…”

Cancer@Work — a nurse-led, stepped-care, e-health intervention to enhance the return to work of patients with cancer: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

“…These return-to-work measures must be sustained for at least 4 consecutive weeks. Furthermore, secondary outcome measures are work ability using the first three questions of the Work Ability Index (WAI) [ 34 ], work functioning using the Work Limitations Questionnaire (WLQ) [ 35 , 36 ], quality of life using the SF-12 [ 37 ], quality of work life using the QWLQ-CS (De Jong et al in preparation) [ 38 ] and the time from initial sick leave to full return to work without extensive need for recovery using a subscale of the ‘perception and assessment of work questionnaire’ (VBBA) [ 39 ].…”

The Quality of Working Life Questionnaire for Cancer Survivors: Sufficient responsiveness for use as a patient-reported outcome measurement

“…Cancer survivors were recruited through a combination of a consecutive sampling strategy and a purposively sampling strategy to achieve diversity in cancer diagnosis. Dutch cancer survivors who had signed up to take part in one of our previous studies (de Jong et al, 2016), but were not able to take part because we already had enough participants, were asked to take part in this study. Furthermore, cancer survivors from the oncological departments of breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, and haematological cancer at three hospitals in the Netherlands were recruited.…”

“…As a result of focusing on the late effects of cancer and its treatment, researchers have studied adverse work outcomes (Mehnert, de Boer, & Feuerstein, ) by examining the unemployment risk (de Boer, Taskila, Ojajärvi, van Dijk, & Verbeek, ), income losses (Yabroff et al, ), time to return to work (Roelen, Koopmans, Groothoff, van der Klink, & Bultmann, ), factors associated with adverse work outcomes (van Muijen et al, ), and work functioning (Dorland et al, ; Tamminga, Verbeek, Frings‐Dresen, & Boer, ). However, few studies have addressed the experiences and perceptions of cancer survivors in the work environment, namely their quality of working life (de Jong, Tamminga, de Boer, & Frings‐Dresen, ). This is of importance as in the general population it has been found that lower quality of working life leads to higher levels of turnover intention (Mosadeghrad, ).…”