Validation of Living with Chronic Illness Scale in a Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus population

Abstract

Background: Worldwide, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases and one of those producing greatest impact on patients’ day-to-day quality of life. Our study aim is to validate the “Living with Chronic Illness Scale” for a Spanish-speaking T2DM population.Methods: In this observational, international, cross-sectional study, 582 persons with T2DM were recruited in primary care and outpatient hospital consultations, in Spain and Colombia, during the period from May 2018 to June 2019. The properties analysed were feasibility/acceptability, internal consistency, reliability, precision and (structural) content-construct validity including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The COSMIN checklist was used to assess the methodological/psychometric quality of the instrument.Results: The scale had an adequate internal consistency and test retest reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.90; intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.96, respectively). In addition, the instrument is precise (standard error of measurement = 3.34, with values <½SD = 8.52) and correlates positively with social support (DUFSS) (rs = 0.56), quality of life (WHOQOL) (rs = 0.51-0.30) and satisfaction (SLS-6) (rs = 0.50-0.38). The CFA supported the 5-domains structure, but a 23-item version showed better fit: CMIN/df= 3.11; goodness of fit index= 0.91; comparative fit index= 0.91 and root mean square error of approximation = 0.06 (90% confidence interval, 0.06-0.07). The COSMIN checklist is favourable for all the properties analysed, although weaknesses are detected for content validity.Conclusions: “Living with T2DM” (LW-T2DM) is a valid, reliable and accurate instrument for use in clinical practice to determine how a person’s life is affected by the presence of diabetes. This instrument correlates well with the associated constructs of social support, quality of life and satisfaction. Additional research is needed to determine how well the questionnaire structure performs when robust factor analysis methods are applied.

Living with Chronic Illness Scale: International validation through the classic test theory and Rasch analysis among Spanish‐speaking populations with long‐term conditions

“…Convergent validity findings were also identified in previous validation studies 16,18–21 and additionally were confirmed through linear regression models performed with an LTC population such as PD 5 . According to these results, there is clearly a need to place the emphasis on the person and in his/her daily living with the condition, and not just on the disease.…”

“…A weak ( r s = .20–.34) or insignificant ( r s = .00–.19) relationship with age at diagnosis and disease duration was also hypothesized. These hypotheses were established to corroborate previous LW‐CI scale validation study results in specific LTCs 16,18–21 . Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were obtained for this purpose.…”

“…The LW‐CI scale has been previously published for Spanish‐speaking populations in a pilot study carried out among patients living with different LTCs 15 . To date, the LW‐CI scale has been tested separately in several LTCs, namely, Parkinson's disease (PD), 16,17 osteoarthritis, 18 chronic heart failure, 19 type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) 20 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) 21 . The results from each validation study showed that the LW‐CI scale is a feasible, reliable and valid measure to evaluate separately the process of living with an LTC in a Spanish‐speaking population.…”

“…The results from each validation study showed that the LW‐CI scale is a feasible, reliable and valid measure to evaluate separately the process of living with an LTC in a Spanish‐speaking population. According to those validation studies, 16–21 potential modifications were proposed to achieve a better version of the LW‐CI scale for each LTC in particular, such as simplifying the response scale, deleting some items or redesigning the domains. However, could those previous specific‐disease validation results be extended across LTC populations?…”

Virtual Assessment of Imperata Cylindrica Roots Bioactive Compounds as a Potential Inhibitor for Alpha-Glucosidase: the Study of Tengger Tribe’s Medicinal Plant

“…Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a severe chronic and systemic disease. 1,2 Recently, T2DM has become a severe issue worldwide due to its annual increase and prevalence. 3,4 The disease has been associated with cruddy lifestyles; for example, physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyle, cigarette smoking, generous consumption of alcohol, and uncontrolled food intake are common causes of insulin resistance.…”