Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2007, 211(4)

Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of Kidney Disease Quality of Life Instrument (KDQOL-SF^TM)

HYE J PARK,¹ SEHYUN KIM,² JIN S YONG,³ SUNG S HAN,³ DONG H YANG,⁴ MAKIKO MEGURO,⁵ CHANG W HAN^5,6 and MASAHIRO KOHZUKI⁵

¹Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, Pochon CHA University, Pochan, Kyeonggi Do, Republic of Korea
²Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University, Suwon, Kyeonggi Do, Republic of Korea
³College of Nursing, The Catholic University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
⁴Department of Nephrology, Bundang CHA General Hospital, Pochon CHA University, Seongnam, Kyeonggi Do, Republic of Korea
⁵Department of Internal Medicine and Rehablitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan
⁶School of Health and Welfare, Woosong University, Deajeon, Korea

Although the Kidney Disease Quality of Life instrument (KDQOL-SF^TM), which was designed to measure the comprehensive quality of life in patients with end stage renal disease, has been tested and widely administered in many other counties, it has not yet been translated, validated and reported for Korea. The primary purpose of this study was to validate a Korean version of KDQOL-SF^TM and to evaluate its psychometric properties. The study subjects were 164 patients with hemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in university dialysis centers in Korea. In order to investigate the reliability, test-retest reliability and internal consistency reliability were assessed. Both test-retest reliability and internal consistency reliability were found to be high. In order to investigate the construct validation, all the items of the SF-36 scales, an established generic QOL measures, were compared with an overall health rating scale in kidney disease-targeted scale. They found to be highly correlated with each other. Moreover, overall health rating scale was significantly correlated with symptoms/problems, effects of kidney disease, burden of kidney disease, cognitive function (p < 0.001), and quality of social interaction (p < 0.05). These results suggest that the Korean version of KDQOL-SF^TM satisfies its reliability and validity in Korean patients with hemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. This questionnaire provides important and clinically valuable information for understanding the health related quality of life in the Korean patients with dialysis.

keywords —— KDQOL; SF36; Korea; validity; reliability

© 2007 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2007, 211, 321-329

Correspondence: Masahiro Kohzuki M.D., Ph.D., Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-1 Seiryo-cho, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8574, Japan.

e-mail: kohzuki@mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp