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Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) assessment in children and adolescents with chronic health conditions is increasingly considered as a relevant topic. The aim of the EU-funded DISABKIDS project is to develop, test, and implement European instruments for the assessment of HRQOL of children and adolescents with disabilities and their families. The current paper describes the development and pilot testing of a chronic generic HRQOL measure. Using literature searches, expert consulting and focus groups with children/adolescents and their families, items of the instruments were developed and translated into the respective languages. A pilot test with 360 children and adolescents was conducted. Children and adolescents (8-12, 13-16 years) with different chronic health conditions (asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, atopic dermatitis, cerebral palsy, and cystic fibrosis) as well as their families were included. Data were analysed according to predefined psychometric and content criteria. Psychometric analyses resulted in a 56-item chronic generic HRQOL questionnaire with six domains ('Medication', 'Physical', 'Emotion', 'Independence', 'Social Inclusion', 'Social Exclusion') with acceptable internal consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the value of antiandrogen therapy for advanced prostate cancer, two clinical trials of similar design were recently conducted in six countries throughout Europe. A total of 550 patients with previously untreated metastatic prostate cancer were randomized either to treatment with an antiandrogen or castration. While time to treatment failure, objective tumour response and survival were expected to be similar between study treatments, their effects on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) were expected to differ and were therefore a focus of concern in this trial. To assess these effects, we developed a brief self-administered patient questionnaire covering 10 domains of HRQOL (general health perceptions, pain, emotional well-being, vitality, social functioning, physical capacity, sexual interest, sexual functioning, activity limitation and bed disability), which we translated from English into several other languages. In this paper, we describe the development, content and translation of this survey instrument and report on its reliability and validity in six countries based on data collected for the first 487 patients to complete questionnaires at study entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the construct and criterion validity of the KIDSCREEN-27 health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire, a shorter version of the KIDSCREEN-52.Methods: The five-dimensional KIDSCREEN-27 was tested in a sample of 22,827. For criterion validity the correlation with and the percentage explained variance of the scores of the KIDSCREEN-52 instrument were examined. Construct validity was assessed by testing a priori expected associations with other generic HRQoL measures (YQOL-S, PedsQL, CHIP), indicators of physical and mental health, and socioeconomic status. Age and gender differences were investigated.Results: Correlation with corresponding scales of the KIDSCREEN-52 ranged from r = 0.63 to r = 0.96, and r2 ranged from 0.39 to 0.92. Correlations between other HRQoL questionnaires and KIDSCREEN-27 dimensions were moderate to high for those assessing similar constructs (r = 0.36 to 0.63). Statistically significant and sizeable differences between physically and mentally healthy and ill children were found in all KIDSCREEN-27 dimensions together with strong associations with psychosomatic complaints (r = -0.52). Most of the KIDSCREEN-27 dimensions showed a gradient according to socio-economic status, age and gender.Conclusions: The KIDSCREEN-27 seems to be a valid measure of HRQoL in children and adolescents. Further research is needed to assess longitudinal validity and sensitivity to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Self-report questionnaires are widely used to measure health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Ideally, such questionnaires should be adapted to the individual patient and at the same time scores should be directly comparable across patients. This may be achieved using computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Usually, CAT is carried out for a single domain at a time. However, many HRQOL domains are highly correlated. Multidimensional CAT may utilize these correlations to improve measurement efficiency. We investigated the possible advantages and difficulties of multidimensional CAT.Study Design and Setting: We evaluated multidimensional CAT of three scales from the EORTC QLQ-C30: the physical functioning, emotional functioning, and fatigue scales. Analyses utilised a database with 2958 European cancer patients.Results: It was possible to obtain scores for the three domains with five to seven items administered using multidimensional CAT that were very close to the scores obtained using all 12 items and with no or little loss of measurement precision.Conclusion: The findings suggest that multidimensional CAT may significantly improve measurement precision and efficiency and encourage further research into multidimensional CAT. Particularly, the estimation of the model underlying the multidimensional CAT and the conceptual aspects need further investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]