A Brief Version of the Quality of Life in Short Stature Youth Questionnaire - the QoLISSY-Brief

• Published in: Child indicators research Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 971 - 984
• Main Authors: Rohenkohl, Anja C., Bullinger, Monika, Pleil, Andreas M., Kriston, Levente, Quitmann, Julia H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Child and School Psychology; Children; Children & youth; Clinical medicine; Compliance; Early Childhood Education; Health status; Height; Item Response Theory; Psychometrics; Quality of Life; Quality of Life Research; Quantitative psychology; Questionnaires; Reliability; Short forms; Short stature; Social Sciences; Social Work; Validity; Youth; Short stature; Questionnaire; Children; Brief version; Quality of life
• ISSN: 1874-897X; 1874-8988
• DOI: 10.1007/s12187-015-9350-2

The Quality of Life in Short Stature Youth (QoLISSY) questionnaire measures health-related quality of life (HrQoL) in short statured children (8–18 years) from patient and parent perspectives. To minimize respondent burden when assessing HrQoL in clinical practice, a brief version of the currently available 22-item QoLISSY is needed. The dataset of the European QoLISSY study ( N  = 268) was divided into two subdatasets at random, one to identify the items of the brief questionnaire and the other to test the operating characteristics (reliability and validity). Concept-based construction involved the selection of three items per Quality of Life (QoL)-dimension (physical, social, emotional) according to the highest corrected item-scale correlation. Psychometric properties were inspected in terms of reliability and validity supplemented by testing item fit statistics to examine item response theory (IRT) compliance. Cronbach’s alpha for the 9-item version was 0.89 for the patient- and the parent report. Pearson’s correlations with the generic KIDSCREEN questionnaire were low to moderate (children: r  = 0.17–0.58; parents: r  = 0.12–0.56). Shorter children reported significantly poorer QoL (mean difference 15.39 points; p  < 0.001) than taller children, indicating known-groups validity. Results from IRT analysis showed an acceptable fit to Masters’ Partial Credit Model. The 9-item QoLISSY brief version has satisfactory operating characteristics and is an efficient alternative for use in research and practice.