Psychometric evaluation of the Wound-QoL questionnaire to assess health-related quality of life in Chinese people with chronic wounds

Abstract

Chronic wounds are very common wound types in clinics which have a prolonged and painful healing process. Chronic wounds affect health-related quality of life (HRQoL) on patients. However, there is no specific instrument to measure the HRQoL in Chinese patients with chronic wounds. Wound-QoL is a questionnaire targeted the experience of health-related life to patients with chronic wounds. The study aims to translate and cross-culturally adapt the Wound-QoL into Chinese and to evaluate its psychometric properties (validity, reliability, floor, and ceiling effect) in a convenience sample of 203 Chinese outpatients with chronic wounds. Reliability was good, with internal consistency of 0.798-0.960 and test-retest reliability of 0.720-0.838. Criterion-related validity was assessed by the correlation coefficient between Wound-QoL and generic European QoL instrument- EQ-5D-5L, which was found statistically significant (P<.001). No signs of floor or ceiling effect could be detected. Further, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to verify the reliability and validity of the instrument in this study. In conclusion, the Chinese Wound-QoL is a valid and reliable tool for measuring HRQoL in populations with chronic wounds.

Keywords: Chinese; chronic wound; quality of life; wound QoL.