Cultural adaptation and validation of the "Diabetes Quality of Life for Youths" measure of Ingersoll and Marrero into Brazilian culture

Abstract

The aim of this study was to adapt the "Diabetes Quality of Life for Youths (DQOLY)" measure into Brazilian culture and to analyze its psychometric properties. The cross-cultural adaptation included the phases of translation, backtranslation, committee review, and pretesting. The adapted instrument was applied to 124 type 1 diabetes mellitus´adolescents. The reliability results showed adequate Cronbach's alpha coefficients (0.8695 for Satisfaction domain, 0.8658 for Impact, 0.8387 for Worries and 0.9333 for total), with the exclusion of 3 inconsistent items. The test-retests showed no significant difference between two instrument's applications in different periods (p>0.05). The validity was demonstrated by the strategies: content, convergent, factorial and discriminant. All subscales showed positive correlations between itselves (p<0.001) and with the adolescents' self-perception of their health status (p<0.001). The present study suggests that this version of the DQOLY is a reliable and valid measure for its use in Brazil.