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Reliability and validity of the Iranian version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales in adolescents

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Abstract

Objective

The objective of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the Iranian version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 (PedsQL™ 4.0) Generic Core Scales in adolescents

Methods

After linguistic validation, the Iranian version of the PedsQL™ 4.0 was completed by 848 healthy and 26 chronically ill adolescents aged 13–18 years and their parents.

Results

The internal consistency as measured by Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeded the minimum reliability standard of .70. No floor effects were observed. Ceiling effects detected ranged from 1.5% for adolescent self-report total scale score to 42.2% for self-report social functioning. All monotrait-multimethod correlations were higher than multitrait-multimethod correlations. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) between adolescent self-report and parent proxy-report showed good to excellent agreement. Exploratory factor analysis supported mainly comparable results with the original US English dialect version. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis for 5-factor models for both self-report and proxy-report indicated acceptable fit for the proposed models. Regarding gender and health status, as hypothesized from previous studies, girls reported lower health-related quality of life than boys on the total score, physical and emotional functioning, and healthy adolescents reported significantly higher health-related quality of life than those with chronic illnesses.

Conclusion

The findings support the initial reliability and validity of the Iranian version of the PedsQL™ 4.0 as a generic instrument to measure HRQOL of adolescents in Iran.

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Fig. 1
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Abbreviations

HRQOL:

Health-related quality of life

PedsQL™ 4.0:

Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0

EFA:

Exploratory factor analysis

CFA:

Confirmatory factor analysis

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the contribution of all field workers who conducted the data collection. Competing Interests: Dr. Varni holds the copyright and the trademark for the PedsQL™ and receives financial compensation from the Mapi Research Trust, which is a nonprofit research institute that charges distribution fees to for-profit companies that use the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Obesity Research Center, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, P.O.Box: 19395-4763, Tehran, Iran

    Parisa Amiri, Emad M. Ardekani, Sara Jalali-Farahani & Farhad Hosseinpanah

  2. Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    James W. Varni

  3. Health Education Department, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Fazlollah Ghofranipour

  4. Department of Mental Health, Iranian Institute for Health Sciences Research, ACECR, Tehran, Iran

    Ali Montazeri

  5. Endocrine Research Center, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Fereidoun Azizi

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  1. Parisa Amiri
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  2. Emad M. Ardekani
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  3. Sara Jalali-Farahani
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  4. Farhad Hosseinpanah
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  5. James W. Varni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Farhad Hosseinpanah.

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Amiri, P., M. Ardekani, E., Jalali-Farahani, S. et al. Reliability and validity of the Iranian version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales in adolescents. Qual Life Res 19, 1501–1508 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-010-9712-7

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