Adaptation and Validation of the Hamburg Quality of Life Questionnaire in Multiple Sclerosis (HAQUAMS) for Use in Iranian Patients

Purpose: Quality of life (QoL) is considered as an important criterion for therapeutic effectiveness. Therefore, the present study aimed to validate the Persian version of the Hamburg Quality of Life Questionnaire in Multiple Sclerosis (HAQUAMS) for use in Iranian people with MS.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 158 people with MS were selected through the census sampling method. The construct validity of the Persian version of HAQUAMS was first evaluated by a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS-22 software, and then the internal consistency reliability and the item-total score correlations were calculated for each subscale by the SPSS-22.

Results: The CFA and output results indicated that the HAQUAMS with a five-factor structure among the Iranian MS patients had a good construct validity if an item was eliminated and a number of covariance errors between items were released (RMSEA is euqal to 0.069). The internal consistency of HAQUAMS subscales was acceptable to excellent (alpha is euqal to 0.81 to 0.91). The analysis of item-total score correlation for determining the construct validity of HAQUAMS indicated that all items of the questionnaire had a moderate to strong positive correlation with their subscales (P less than 0.0001, r is euqal to 0.41 to 0.89). The correlation of total scores of HAQUAMS and the Beck Depression Inventory-short form (BDI-13) was equal to 0.74 (P less than 0.0001), indicating good concurrent criterion validity.

Conclusion: The Persian version of the HAQUAMS with a five-factor construct had acceptable validity and reliability and could be used for measurement of the health related QoL in Iranian people with MS.