Quality of life evaluation can help to determine the necessary interventions for improving cancer survivor’s quality of life. Among the available tools, we used the QLACS questionnaire because it covered different aspects of life among cancer survivors (
3). In this study, after the translation process, we evaluated the face, content and construct validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Overall, 46 items had impact scores of more than 1.5; thus, they were used to evaluate CVR and CVI validity. Nine items were deleted in the content validity stage because of CVR less than 0.99 (seven items) and CVI less than 0.7 (two items). EFA extracted 10 factors from the 37 items. All of the questionnaire domains had a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of more than 0.7.
According to our results, 10 items were deleted in the face and content validity stages. One reason can be the specialist panel that expressed their opinions subjectively about items. However, specialists’ panel were involved in different aspects of cancer patients to reduce this effect. Cultural and environmental differences between countries can be another reason for changing the number of items. Previous studies had not examined QLACS face and content validity.
Based on the results of KMO and Bartlett’s test of sphericity, we could confirm that our data are suitable to conduct EFA. EFA extracted 10 factors from 37 items. The Persian version had two factors less than the original questionnaire. This difference was due to integrating the recurrence-distress and family distress factors and positive and negative feelings factors. The Persian version of the QLACS questionnaire explained 75.8% of the total variance. This incoherence may be due to the number of items used for factor analysis. In this study, after face and content validity stages, 37 items were selected for EFA. Another reason can be a similar understanding of some sentences in our language. Also, the difference in target populations can justify this difference. In this study, breast cancer patients were studied, but the original questionnaire was used for different kinds of cancers (
6).
We identified a negative, positive dimension: This factor includes many of the same items as original QLACS questionnaire positive and negative feeling domains except one item ("you were bothered by having a short attention span."). This item was deleted in the content validity stage because could not obtain CVR more than 0.99 according to panelist opinions for necessary aspect. CVR is dependent on the number of panel specialist. In this study, we had a panel, including 6 specialists. In previous studies, CVR was not calculated for QLACS.
We identified a Distress/recurrence dimension: This factor includes items of the distress- recurrence domain and one item from the family-distress domain from the original QLACS questionnaire. Two items from the family distress domain were deleted in this study. The item "you were worried about whether your family members should have genetic tests for cancer" was deleted thein face validity stage because this item could not obtain sufficient importance score according to the panelists’ opinions. "You were worried about whether your family members might have cancer-causing genes" was deleted in the content validity stage.
We identified a social avoidance dimension: This factor included the same items as the social avoidance factor in the original QLACS questionnaire. We also identified a financial dimension: This factor included all the items that were similar to those in the original questionnaire.
We identified a sexual problem dimension: This factor included three items of the sexual problem domain in the original questionnaire. One item (“you were bothered by being unable to function sexually”) was deleted in the content validity stage according to the panelists’ opinions, which could be due to cultural issues.
We identified a cognitive problem dimension: This factor expressed three items of the same factor in the original instrument. One Item ("you were bothered by having a short attention span") was deleted due to CVR less than 0.99.
We identified a pain dimension: This factor was similar to that in the original instrument.
We identified an appearance concerns dimension: This factor included all of the items as the original questionnaire except for “you were self-conscious about the way you look because of your cancer or its treatment”. This item was deleted because it was not relevant enough according to the panelists’ opinions.
We identified a fatigue/energy dimension: This factor expressed two items from the original instrument. Items “you did not have the energy to do the things you wanted to do” and “you felt tired a lot” were deleted because of CVR less than 0.66.
We identified a benefit dimension: This factor included two items from the original questionnaire. In this study, two items were deleted from the benefit factor from the original questionnaire. Items “You appreciate life more because of having had cancer” and “You realize that having had cancer helps you cope better with problems now” were deleted because of CVR less than 0.6 (
6).
Previous studies did not apply EFA for the QLACS questionnaire, which limited our comparisons (
3,
9). However, EFA should be used in the early stages of developing or correcting an instrument (
13).
In this study, Cronbach’s alpha was used to evaluate internal consistency. The range of Cronbach’s alpha was between 0.74 - 0.93 for different factors of the questionnaire. The range of Cronbach’s alpha for the original questionnaire factors was between 0.72 - 0.91 that was similar to our results. In the Spanish version of the questionnaire, the range of Cronbach’s alpha was between 0.73 and 0.87 (
6).
Our results supported that the Persian version of the QLACS questionnaire has suitable properties for evaluating the quality of life among short survivors of breast cancer.
5.1. Limitations
There were some limitations to this study. According to the specialist panel’s suggestions, face and content validity were determined so it can change by changing the specialist panel. For further studies, we suggest a panel group with a greater number of specialists to reduce this effect. In this study, we used EFA for construct validity. For further studies we recommend confirmatory factor analysis for confirming our findings.
5.2. Conclusion
According to the results, the Persian version of the QLACS questionnaire has optimal properties for assessing the quality of life among Iranian short-survivors of breast cancer.