[Parent-reported Health-Related Quality of Life in Spanish pre-schoolers: Psychometric properties of the Kiddy-KINDL-R].

INTRODUCTION

Although several tools have been developed to assess general HRQoL in children, parental reports are required to supplement this information, especially in very young children. The parents version of the Kiddy-KINDL-R was developed to assess HRQoL in children aged 3 to 7 years through the reports of their parents or legal guardians.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to validate the parents version of the Kiddy-KINDL-R questionnaire and assess its psychometric properties in a sample of Spanish preschool-aged children.

METHOD

Cross-sectional study in 283 parents or legal guardians of children aged 3 to 6 years that completed the Kiddy-KINDL-R questionnaire and an additional scale to assess anxiety problems. We performed confirmatory factor analysis to assess whether the original Kiddy-KINDL-R version fit the Spanish data; we assessed internal consistency by means of the ordinal alpha and the discriminant validity by means of the Preschool Anxiety Scale.

RESULTS

Although the original six-factor model showed a good fit, we propose a model consisting of 22 items and the same 6 factors for the Spanish version. The reliability was excellent, and the internal consistency values were adequate. Our results showed significant negative correlations between the Kiddy-KINDL-R and the external anxiety measure, which was evidence of discriminant validity.

CONCLUSION

We demonstrated that the Spanish version of the Kiddy-KINDL-R had good psychometric properties and that this questionnaire is an adequate assessment tool that could be useful in clinical practice.