[Development and evaluation of the scale of quality of life for children with bilateral congenital cataract].

OBJECTIVE

To develop and evaluate the 23-item quality of life (QoL) 125 scale contained four subscales for children with bilateral congenital cataract.

METHODS

18 children with normal visual acuity and 76 patients with congenital bilateral cataract (age range of 8 years to 15 years) were evaluated with QoL. The 23-item QoL scale contained the following subscales: visual function, self-care, sociality, and mentality. Dispersion, correlation coefficient, factor analysis, discrimination analysis, Cronbach alpha and test-retest reliability were applied to select the parameters and data analysis.

RESULTS

The new scale included 20 items after screening. The correlation coefficients of content validity of each item and subscale were beyond 0.6 (P < 0.05). Statistically significant difference was found at discrimination analysis between normal and cataract children (P' = 0.000), the differences was also demonstrated between preoperative and postoperative cataract children (P' = 0.000). The coefficient of test-retest reliability was 0.895 (P = 0.000), and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of four subscales were 0.822, 0.922, 0.797, and 0.794 respectively. The statistics value of effective size was 1.141.

CONCLUSIONS

significant reliability, validity and responsibility to change life quality were achieved in the 20-item scale of QoL for children with bilateral congenital cataract. This scale can be applied to evaluate the life quality of bilateral cataract children.