RELIABILITY AND CONCURRENT VALIDITY OF THE CHILD HEALTH QUESTIONNAIRE
28-ITEM PARENT FORM (CHQ-PF28) AS PEDIATRIC GENERIC HEALTH STATUS MEASURE
Raat H1, Landgraf JM2, Essink-Bot ML1
1 Dept. of Public Health,
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2 Health Act, Boston, MA, USA
Generic health status measures, like the Child Health
Questionnaire (CHQ), are mandatory for assessment of outcome in addition to
disease specific- and clinical measures. The CHQ-PF28 is a short, and
therefore practical, instrument for measuring the physical, emotional and
social well being of children. The purpose of this study is to assess
reliability and concurrent validity of the CHQ-PF28, a 28-item Parent Form
with 12 separate domains. The American CHQ has been translated into Dutch
(and 19 other languages) conform formal translation guidelines. A random
sample of 2040 parents of elementary school children in Krimpen and
Ridderkerk, The Netherlands received in March 2001 a mail questionnaire
(age 5-13; response 70%). Data of the first 787 respondents have already
been processed and were eligible for analyses. The parents also completed
another health status measure, which serves as a check for validity: the
Health Utility Index mark 2 and 3 (HUI15Q). The Cronbach alpha’s of the 8
multi-item CHQ-scales were on average .60 (range .36-.78; 4 were >.70).
The CHQ domains correlated better with predefined parallel HUI2/3-domains
than with non-parallel domains. E.g.: [1] CHQ-Physical summary - HUI3-Pain:
Spearman-r=.36, p<.01; but CHQ-Physical summary - HUI3-Emotion: r=.01,
NS; [2] CHQ-Psychosocial summary - HUI3-Pain: r=.13, p<.01; but
CHQ-Psychosocial summary - HUI3-Emotion: r=.38, p<.01. In conclusion: internal reliabilities
of the shortest CHQ-scales are variable, while concurrent validity equals
that of the longer CHQ-PF50. The CHQ-PF28, as it is short, may be applied
if there is not sufficient place for the currently often used CHQ-PF50 item
form, in order to augment outcome assessment, in addition to clinical measures
used in routine practice.