Preliminary validation of the Chinese version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory

The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) is a scale for assessing health-related quality of life of children and adolescents aged 2-18 years. Three reports of PedsQL for the age ranges 2-4 years and 5-7 years were translated into Chinese and their validities were examined. A total of 186 children and parents were involved in the study. Content validity, test-retest reliability, internal consistency reliability and construct validity were assessed. The correlation of parents' and children's reports was also examined. The results showed that the internal consistency is generally good, test-retest reliability ranged from moderate to good, differences between disabled and non-disabled individuals are significant in total scores and in all subscales except for the physical functioning subscale for the children's self-report for the age ranges of 2-4 years and 5-7 years and the correlation between the reports of the parents and children for the age range of 5-7 years is moderate to high. This suggests that the newly translated Chinese PedsQL for children aged 2-4 years and 5-7 years seems to be reliable and valid to be used as a measure of health-related quality of life in Chinese pediatric research and clinical applications.