Propriedades psicométricas do instrumento WHOQOL-Children para avaliação da qualidade de vida em crianças

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the WHOQOLChildren instrument through criterion test validity, face validity, content validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability and convergent validity. The WHOQOLChildren instrument assess the quality of life of children. For this purpose, the translation of WHOQOL-Children instrument was used the methodological procedure of WHOQOL-group. The WHOQOL-Children instrument was applied in 46 children for evaluate the criterion validity, face validity, construction validity and internal consistency in the pilot test. After this, the final version of the WHOQOLChildren instrument was applied in 317 children for evaluate the following test: [1] content validity; [2] face validity; [3] criterion validity; [4] internal consistency; [5] convergent validity; [6] test-retest reliability. The final version of WHQOL-Children instrument is similar to original instrument. Therefore, the instrument was approved by two experts and one linguistics professional. The criterion validity showed significant correlation between all the domains of WHOQOL-Children instrument. The biggest correlation was observed between Environment and Psychological Domains (0,650). The smallest correlation was observed between Spirituality/Religion/Personal beliefs and Level of Independence domains (0,202). In the internal consistency, the Cronbach´s alpha´s was higher to 0,70 in “54 questions” (0,846), “Facets” (0,886), ¨Domains” (0,821) and “Facets + Domains” (0,921). In the convergent validity, only the Spirituality/Religion/Personal beliefs domain did not present significant correlation with the global score of KIDSCREEN- 52 instrument. Lastly, was observed three domains with significant difference between test and retest (Psichological, Level of Independence and Global Score). Therefore, we found that only Spirituality/Religion/Personal beliefs domain did not present significant correlation between test and retest. We concluded that the WHOQOL-Children brazilian version showed good psychometric properties. The WHOQOL-Children appears to be a suitable instrument for measuring quality of life in Brazilian children.