English publication
Verrips,
G.H., Vogels, A.G.C., Verloove-Vanhorick, S.P., Fekkes, M., Koopman, H.M.,
Kamphuis, R.P., Theunissen, N.C.M., & Wit, J.M. (1997). Health-related
quality of life measure for children -- the TACQOL. Journal of Applied
Therapeutics, 1, 357-360.
Abstract
Health related quality of life (HRQoL), defined as the patients' own evaluation
of their health status, is an important criterion in evaluating health
and health care. Until now, few systematic attempts have been made to
develop instruments to assess HRQoL in children. For this reason, the
aim of the study was to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TNO-AZL-Child-Quality-Of-Life
(TACQOL) questionnaire; a 56-item, generic, multidimensional HRQoL instrument
for children aged 5-15 years, to be completed by parents. The parents
of 77 patients, aged 5-15, who were visiting the paediatric outpatient
clinic of Leiden University Medical Centre consented to participate in
the study and to complete the TACQOL. The results indicated that Cronbach's
alpha value for reliability of the TACQOL scales, range from .71 to .89,
and that the correlation coefficients among scales were low, indicating
the independence of the scales. The scales structure was confirmed in
principal component analysis. Only a minority of parents indicated health
status problems in their child an also reported negative emotional feelings
contingent on such problems. It is concluded that the psychometric performance
of the TACQOL is good, and the instrument may be used to assess group
differences in HRQoL in children. In defining HRQoL, relevance of the
distinction between health status and negative emotional reactions to
health status problems is supported by the results of the study.
Keywords
health status; quality of life; children;
