TITLE:
Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life in Adolescents by Subgroups of Students and Outpatient Mental Health Clients
AUTHORS:
Silvia Maués Santos Rodrigues, Janari da Silva Pedroso, Fernando Augusto Ramos Pontes, Christoph O. Käppler
KEYWORDS:
Quality of Life, Adolescence, Validity, Mental Health, KIDSCREEN-27
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.6 No.7,
June
4,
2015
ABSTRACT: This study aims to compare generic measures of HRQoL obtained with the KIDSCREEN-27
into subgroups of adolescents from different contexts including subgroup of outpatient
treatment for mental disorders and subgroups of students from regions with low and
high human development index in the direction of analyzing the discriminant properties
of the instrument and its utility to monitor health outcomes in adolescents. Descriptive
statistics are presented by group and gender. The statistical analyses aimed to
check the reliability, convergent validity between self-report and proxy versions
and discriminant validity between clinical and students contexts using KIDCREEN-
27 questionnaires. Most assumptions about the reliability, convergent and discriminant
validity of the instrument KIDSCREEN-27 were established. This research highlighted
lower scores of HRQOL in adolescents with mental illness in four of five dimensions,
with an effect size ranging from 0.25 for Physical Well-Being to 0.46 for Autonomy
& Parents. The results were acceptable, but the findings in this study were
more modest than those obtained in the original validation of the instrument.