Shen Fan, Chi Wenhua, Yang Xizi, Li Gaofeng, Tan Jianfeng, Wan Chonghua
School of Humanities and Management, Research Center for Quality of Life and Applied Psychology, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, China.
College of Nursing, Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, Xianyang, China.
Front Oncol. 2025 Jun 26;15:1606655. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1606655. eCollection 2025.
Two head and neck cancer quality-of-life(QoL) measurement tools, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Head and Neck (FACT-H&N) and the Quality of Life Instruments for Cancer Patients-Head and Neck Cancer (QLICP-HN), are widely used in China, but several researchers tend to be confused about which QoL measurement tool to choose before conducting QoL measurements. This investigation aimed to employ data procured from patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer to conduct a comparative analysis of these two assessment tools.
Questionnaire outcomes were scrutinized at the subscale level by utilizing scale measurement analytics, correlation evaluation, validation examination, and association analyses.
Correlations between the two QoL instruments: the QLICP-HN and the FACT-H&N, fluctuated from r = 0.30 (indicating weak agreement) within the social/family domain to r = 0.80 (indicating robust agreement) within the psychological domain. Intermediate r values were associated with the remaining domains. Examination of typical correlations between the two subscales unveiled a moderate overall concurrence between the two tools (first typical correlation coefficient r = 0.89, although the overall redundancy remained at less than 57%). In the overall measurement performance, each of the two QoL tools exhibited particular strengths. However, the QLICP-HN showcased higher total scale internal consistency coefficients and a more extensive range of subscale internal consistency coefficients than the FACT-H&N scales, albeit it exhibited inferior discriminant and convergent validity.
This empirical investigation highlights that, despite some overlap in the information provided by the two QoL instruments, substantial differences persist, thereby negating the possibility of one tool substituting for the other. Consequently, outcomes derived from these two QoL measures cannot be directly juxtaposed.
两种头颈癌生活质量（QoL）测量工具，即癌症治疗功能评估-头颈（FACT-H&N）和癌症患者生活质量量表-头颈癌（QLICP-HN），在中国被广泛使用，但一些研究人员在进行生活质量测量之前往往对选择哪种QoL测量工具感到困惑。本调查旨在利用从诊断为头颈癌的患者中获取的数据，对这两种评估工具进行比较分析。
通过使用量表测量分析、相关性评估、效度检验和关联分析，在子量表层面仔细审查问卷结果。
两种QoL工具，即QLICP-HN和FACT-H&N之间的相关性，在社会/家庭领域内从r = 0.30（表明弱一致性）波动到心理领域内r = 0.80（表明强一致性）。中间的r值与其余领域相关。对两个子量表之间典型相关性的检验揭示了两种工具之间存在中等程度的总体一致性（第一个典型相关系数r = 0.89，尽管总体冗余率仍低于57%）。在总体测量性能方面，两种QoL工具各自表现出特定优势。然而，QLICP-HN比FACT-H&N量表展示出更高的总量表内部一致性系数和更广泛的子量表内部一致性系数范围，尽管其判别效度和收敛效度较差。
这项实证研究强调，尽管两种QoL工具提供的信息存在一些重叠，但仍存在实质性差异，因此一种工具无法替代另一种工具。因此，不能直接将这两种QoL测量的结果进行并列比较。
