The MVQOLI successfully captured quality of life in African palliative care: a factor analysis

Quality of life among patients receiving palliative care in South Africa and Uganda: a multi-centred study

“…In order to assess whether or not the MVQOLI was appropriate for measuring QOL in this context, we conducted a factor analysis in a previous publication [52]. Principal component analysis and Varimax rotation were used to determine whether the factor structure of the tool in this study sample replicated the groupings of the original tool dimensions [52].…”

Suitability of quality-of-life outcome measures in palliative care in the South African setting

“…This instrument can be employed to guide the design of care plans and interventions (Byock & Merriman, 1998) and has been used in various care settings: hospices, home care, and palliative outpatient care. The MVQoLI has been validated for its use in African palliative care (Selman et al, 2011a;Namisango et al, 2007) and measures personal experience in five domains: † symptoms in terms of "the experience of the physical discomfort associated with progressive illness; perceived level of physical distress," † function in terms of the "perceived ability to perform accustomed functions and activities of daily living, experienced in relation to expectations," † interpersonal, referring to the "degree of investment in personal relationships and the perceived quality of one's relations with family and friends," † well-being in terms of "self-assessment of an internal condition; subjective sense of emotional 'wellness' or 'dis-ease'; contentment or lack of contentment with self," and Quality of life measures † transcendence referring to the "experienced degree of connection with an enduring construct; degree of experienced meaning or purpose in life." (Byock, 2014) According to Selman et al (2011b), the "Symptoms" and "Functional" subscales relate to the physical domain, while the "Interpersonal" subscale measures the social domain of the patient's illness experience.…”

The “Spirit 8” successfully captured spiritual well-being in African palliative care: factor and Rasch analysis

“…To explore the construct validity of the MVQOLI in South Africa and Uganda, in an earlier article we conducted an exploratory factor analysis of the tool using data from a cross-sectional survey of 285 patients receiving specialist PC [55]. We found clear evidence of five factors underpinning the MVQOLI, which corresponded closely to the subscales described by the MVQOLI developers (Symptoms, Function, Interpersonal, Well-being, and Transcendence).…”

“…For further details on participating services, patient recruitment and data collection, see our previous publication [55].…”

“…The final item from each subscale (items 20 and 25) were not included as they are ''importance'' items used to assess the contribution of the domain to overall quality of life, and hence have been omitted in factor analyses of the tool [55,58]. Following Schwartz et al [58] and our previous factor analysis [55], ''raw'' scores were used in the Spirit 8: all items were scored on a 1 (worst) to 5 (best) Likert scale rather than according to the scoring protocol put forward by the MVQOLI developers. A SWB score was created by summing the scores for all Spirit 8 items, resulting in a possible score from 8 to 40.…”