The aim of this study was to adapt the "Diabetes Quality of Life for Youths (DQOLY)" measure into Brazilian culture and to analyze its psychometric properties. The cross-cultural adaptation included the phases of translation, backtranslation, committee review, and pretesting. The adapted instrument was applied to 124 type 1 diabetes mellitus' adolescents. The reliability results showed adequate Cronbach's alpha coefficients (0.8695 for Satisfaction domain, 0.8658 for Impact, 0.8387 for Worries and 0.9333 for total), with the exclusion of 3 inconsistent items. The test-retests showed no significant difference between two instrument's applications in different periods (p>0.05). The validity was demonstrated by the strategies: content, convergent, factorial and discriminant. All subscales showed positive correlations between itselves (p<0.001) and with the adolescents' self-perception of their health status (p<0.001). The present study suggests that this version of the DQOLY is a reliable and valid measure for its use in Brazil.