Department of Endocrinology, Tenri Hospital, Tenri, Japan.
PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e44304. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044304. Epub 2012 Sep 11.
To develop and validate the Adult Hypopituitarism Questionnaire (AHQ) as a disease-specific, self-administered questionnaire for evaluation of quality of life (QOL) in adult patients with hypopituitarism.
We developed and validated this new questionnaire, using a standardized procedure which included item development, pilot-testing and psychometric validation. Of the patients who participated in psychometric validation, those whose clinical conditions were judged to be stable were asked to answer the survey questionnaire twice, in order to assess test-retest reliability.
Content validity of the initial questionnaire was evaluated via two pilot tests. After these tests, we made minor revisions and finalized the initial version of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed with two domains, one psycho-social and the other physical. For psychometric assessment, analyses were performed on the responses of 192 adult patients with various types of hypopituitarism. The intraclass correlations of the respective domains were 0.91 and 0.95, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.96 and 0.95, indicating adequate test-retest reliability and internal consistency for each domain. For known-group validity, patients with hypopituitarism due to hypothalamic disorder showed significantly lower scores in 11 out of 13 sub-domains compared to those who had hypopituitarism due to pituitary disorder. Regarding construct validity, the domain structure was found to be almost the same as that initially hypothesized. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 228) demonstrated that each domain consisted of six and seven sub-domains.
The AHQ showed good reliability and validity for evaluating QOL in adult patients with hypopituitarism.
开发并验证成人垂体功能减退症问卷（AHQ），作为一种针对成人垂体功能减退症患者的特定疾病、自我管理的生活质量（QOL）评估问卷。
我们采用标准化程序开发和验证了这个新的问卷，该程序包括项目开发、预试验和心理测量验证。在参与心理测量验证的患者中，那些其临床状况被判断为稳定的患者被要求两次回答问卷调查，以评估测试-重测信度。
通过两个预试验评估了初始问卷的内容有效性。在这些测试之后，我们进行了一些小的修订，最终确定了问卷的初始版本。该问卷由两个领域组成，一个是心理社会领域，另一个是身体领域。为了进行心理测量评估，对 192 名患有各种类型垂体功能减退症的成年患者的反应进行了分析。各个领域的组内相关系数分别为 0.91 和 0.95，Cronbach's alpha 系数分别为 0.96 和 0.95，表明每个领域都具有足够的测试-重测信度和内部一致性。对于已知组有效性，由于下丘脑障碍导致的垂体功能减退症患者在 13 个子领域中的 11 个领域的得分明显低于由于垂体障碍导致的垂体功能减退症患者。关于结构有效性，发现该领域的结构几乎与最初假设的相同。探索性因子分析（n=228）表明，每个领域由六个和七个子领域组成。
AHQ 显示出良好的可靠性和有效性，可用于评估成人垂体功能减退症患者的 QOL。
