Quality of Sexual Life Questionnaire (QVS): a reliable, sensitive and reproducible instrument to assess quality of life in subjects with erectile dysfunction

Abstract

A French quality of life questionnaire specific to erectile dysfunction (ED), 'QVS' for 'Questionnaire de Vie Sexuelle', has been developed. This paper describes its validation: item reduction and reliability (internal consistency and reproducibility), construct validity and criterion validity (clinical, discriminant and concurrent). The initial 40-item questionnaire was administered once to 316 ED and 117 control subjects, and twice (D0 and D7) to 104 ED and 29 control subjects. Item reduction gave a 27-item questionnaire with three scales (Sexual Life, Skills and Psychosocial Wellbeing) and four scores (one score for each scale and a Global Index). Psychometric analyses demonstrated the reliability and the validity of the QVS. The questionnaire was able to discriminate patients according to the presence or severity of ED. The Skills scale was the least sensitive. Analysis of responsiveness to change over time still needs to be addressed to consider the questionnaire as a fully validated instrument.

Comparison Between Sildenafil-Treated Subjects with Erectile Dysfunction and Control Subjects on the Self-Esteem And Relationship Questionnaire

“…Confirmatory evidence indicates that successful treatment of ED improves psychological and interpersonal relationships [19] as well as quality of life [20]. Although questionnaires related to the SEAR questionnaire have merit [19][20][21][22], a salient feature of the SEAR questionnaire is its emphasis on confidence, relationship, and especially self-esteem. Three independent clinical trials [10,23,24], two of which were double-blind placebo-controlled studies [23,24], suggest that the SEAR questionnaire is responsive, sensitive, and robust in detecting substantial changes related to relationships, confidence, and particularly selfesteem after successful treatment with sildenafil.…”

Modeling Concordance Correlation Coefficient for Longitudinal Study Data

“…Measures of agreement are widely used in biomedical and psychosocial research for disease diagnoses, assessment and validation of psychometric properties of instruments, and evaluation of treatment fidelity (Bauer & Kennedy, 1981;Chandler, Martin, Girman, Ross, Love-McClung, Lydick, & Yawn, 1998;Costa, Arnould, Cour, Boyer, Marrel, Jaudinot, & Solesse de Gendre, 2003;Westgard & Hunt, 1973). For example, in biomedical research, it is often of interest to compare a newly developed diagnostic method with a reference standard to determine its diagnostic accuracy.…”

Inventories for male and female sexual dysfunctions

“…The skill scale is probably the most interesting novelty of this instrument, providing additional information about the importance of the disorder perceived by patients, which appeared to be driven by nonclinical factors. 34 The psychometric analysis showed good reliability and validity, but there is not sufficient evidence about the usefulness of this instrument in clinical studies.…”

“…Quality of Sexual Life Questionnaire (QVS 34 ) is an instrument composed of three scales: sexual life, skills and psycho-social well-being. The skill scale is probably the most interesting novelty of this instrument, providing additional information about the importance of the disorder perceived by patients, which appeared to be driven by nonclinical factors.…”

“…Although considered a benign disorder (not reducing life-expectancy), ED has specific psychological, relational and psycho-sexual consequences on males including depression, anxiety, sexual avoidance or marital problems, 2,23-31 which eventually impair their quality of life (QoL [32][33][34][35] ). The importance of QoL as part of overall health is supported by the World Health Organization's definition of health.…”