Measuring Quality of Life in Aphasics - Development of the QoL-Aphasia 28 Items

Abstract

Until now, measuring quality of life in Dutch aphasics was not possible because of unsuitable questionnaires. The existing questionnaires do not focus on communication or the grammatical structure of the questions is far to complex. The aim of this study is to develop a Dutch questionnaire that measures the quality of life in aphasics. Therefore it has to cover all important domains and use questions with simple grammatical structures. To see whether it is possible to let the partner of the patient fill in the questionnaire when the patient is not able to, a proxy version was developed. The QoL-Aphasia 28 Items was developed in two stages. In the first stage, 35 aphasics and 25 partners participated. The questionnaire contained 38 questions. Reliability analysis showed a high Cronbach’s alpha: .814. Item-to-Total correlations and Principal Component Analysis lead to the deletion of 10 questions. The adjusted version of the questionnaire was used in the second stage of this study. Seven aphasics and 4 partners participated and the questionnaire contained 28 questions. Reliability analysis showed that the questionnaire is homogeneous: Cronbach’s alpha was .846. Validity was not officially checked. However, it can be assumed that the questionnaire is valid because the domains in the questionnaire correspond with the domains The WHOQoL Group (1994) defined in their definition of quality of life. Answers of patients and partners did not correspond: an average of 38% of the answers was identical in both stages. This means that the partner can not fill in the questionnaire when the patient is not able to. When the questionnaire developed in this study is further checked for reliability and validity, it is ready to be used.