Development and validation of a WHOQOL-BREF Taiwanese audio player-assisted interview version for the elderly who use a spoken dialect

Abstract

A quality of life questionnaire is rarely adapted to an interview mode for people who mainly use spoken language in daily life. In Taiwan, the WHOQOL-BREF (Mandarin Chinese version) has been developed, as a self-administered questionnaire, but it cannot be applied to the majority of the elderly in Taiwan, who speak only Taiwanese (a dialect). This study adopted the audio player-assisted interview mode to develop a Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF specifically for Taiwanese-speaking elderly people, and followed with examinations of the reliability and validity of this version. Initially, the WHOQOL-BREF (English version) was translated into colloquial Taiwanese, and field tests confirmed the equivalence and appropriateness of the translation. A total of 228 Taiwanese-speaking elderly people were assessed using the Taiwanese interview version, of which 144 subjects were re-assessed two weeks later. Interviewers assessed each subject aided by an audio player on which all the translated WHO-QOL-BREF contents were recorded. The Taiwanese interview version of the WHOQOL-BREF, except for the item related to dependence on medication, showed acceptable reliability (internal consistency, corrected item-domain correlation, and test-retest reliability) and validity (criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the four-factor model of the Taiwanese interview version, providing evidence for construct validity. The results suggest that the Taiwanese audio player-assisted interview version of the WHOQOL-BREF was reliable and valid in assessing quality of life of elderly Taiwanese.

Psychometric Properties of the WHOQOL-BREF in an Iranian Adult Sample

“…In this respect they are in line with several studies on quality of life of life of people with rheumatoid arthritis (Taylor et al 2004), normal population in Korean (Min et al 2002), Denmark (Noerholam et al 2004), Netherland (Trompenaars et al 2005, Bangladesh (Izutsu et al 2005), China (Leung et al 2005), Taiwanese patients with AIDS (Fang et al 2002), Brazilian outpatients with major depression (Berlim et al 2005), Brazilian alcoholic male patients , Taiwanese aged people (Chien et al 2007), and Iranian population with physical and mental ill health (Nedjat et al 2008).…”

“…Some scholars have tried to confirm whether their observed data represent the original structure prescribed by the WHOQOL-Group, using rigorous and tedious statistical methods including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Trompenaars et al 2005;Berlim et al 2005;Lima et al 2005;Yao and Wu 2005;Izutsu et al 2005;Nedjat et al 2008). Others have relied simply on descriptive statistics and reliability Cronbach Alpha, without ruling out the possibility of factor invariance (Leung et al 2005;Chien et al 2007;Yao et al 2008). Most of the studies were conducted in countries with different cultures and languages (Yao and Wu 2005;Leung et al 2005;Chien et al 2007;Yao et al 2008).…”

“…Others have relied simply on descriptive statistics and reliability Cronbach Alpha, without ruling out the possibility of factor invariance (Leung et al 2005;Chien et al 2007;Yao et al 2008). Most of the studies were conducted in countries with different cultures and languages (Yao and Wu 2005;Leung et al 2005;Chien et al 2007;Yao et al 2008). A single evidence in Iran by Nedjat et al (2008) produced acceptable reliability (0.55-0.84) and discriminant validity for the interview version of the WHOQOL-BREF.…”

Quality of life of Chinese urban community residents: a psychometric study of the mainland Chinese version of the WHOQOL-BREF

“…Consistent with previous research [44,45], socioeconomic status was positively related to QOL in the Chinese urban community residents. Among various sociodemographic variables, the level of education had the strongest relationships with the four domains of QOL.…”

Psychometric properties of the World Health Organization quality of life assessment – brief in methadone patients: a validation study in northern Taiwan

“…At the item level, however, 2 items (i.e., “To what extent do you feel that your pain prevents you in doing what you need to do?” and “How much do you need any medical treatment to cope with your daily life?”) showed weak criterion-related validity with overall QOL. Similar finding was also reported in a validation study of the Taiwanese audio player-assisted interview version of WHOQOL-BREF [41]. Because overall QOL involves a wide range of factors, it is possible that an individual item, which reflects only a narrow QOL facet, showed lower association with the criterion.…”