Paediatric health‐related quality of life instrument for primary school children: cross‐cultural validation

AIM: This article is a report of a study to validate the Finnish version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory(TM) (PedsQL*) for children aged 8-12 years. BACKGROUND: Promoting and improving health and well-being of children are the global goals of primary-day health care. Sophisticated, internationally valid measurement tools are needed for planning, conducting and evaluating interventions to meet these challenges. The PedsQL is a promising, relatively new instrument developed in the United States to assess health-related quality of life (HRQL) in children and adolescents. METHOD: Content validity of the Finnish version of PedsQL 4.0 was assessed in 2004 during the translation process and tested by performing cognitive interviews with children aged 8-12 years (n = 7) and their parents (n = 5). Construct validity and reliability of the Finnish version of the PedsQL 4.0 were statistically tested on a sample of school children (n = 1097) and their parents (n = 999). FINDINGS: Cognitive interviews confirmed that the concepts, questions and response alternatives of the Finnish version are equivalent to the original PedsQL 4.0. The Finnish version was easy to understand and complete. The construct validity was good. Cronbach s alpha values were excellent for the total scale score (Child-Self Report alpha = 0.91 and Parent-Proxy Report alpha = 0.88) and good for sub- and summary scales (Child-Self Report alpha = 0.73-0.89 and Parent-Proxy Report alpha = 0.69-0.86). CONCLUSION: Results support previous research on validity and reliability of the PedsQL 4.0. The Finnish version of the PedsQL 4.0 demonstrated good validity and reliability in primary school children. Future research is needed to examine, construct and predictive validity of the Finnish version of the PedsQL 4.0.