[Measuring health-related quality of life in children and adolescents: preliminary validation and reliability of the Spanish version of the KINDL questionnaire].

OBJECTIVES

To obtain a first Spanish version of the KINDL questionnaire idiomatic and culturally equivalent to the German original version, and then to evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample of healthy children/adolescents 8-16 years old, and their parents.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING

2 public schools of Asturias of similar sociodemographic conditions.

PARTICIPANTS

243 children 8-16 year-old, and 153 parents were investigated.

MAIN MEASUREMENTS

HRQoL evaluated through the generic questionnaire KINDL. An external assessment through the parents was made as well. The psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the questionnaire were investigated and results on HRQoL are presented for different ages and gender in the Spanish sample.

RESULTS

6 items (6/24) needed successive translations and conceptual discussion during the phase of idiomatic adaptation. The factorial analysis confirmed the validity of construction of the instrument for most scales. The internal consistency, measured by alpha Cronbach coefficent, was good for the total of the questionnaire (>0.70) and acceptable in most of the scales (>0.50). Only the school scale for adolescents shows very poor reliability. Females and children with higher age scored lower in most of the investigated dimensions (P<.01).

CONCLUSIONS

The first Spanish version of the Kindl showed acceptable reliability and validity. In spite of the punctual inadequacies found in this first step of the investigation, the results constitute an important starting point to work further on the KINDL as an HRQoL instrument--in Spanish language--to measure subjective well-being in children.