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Kids’ Life and Times: using an Internet survey to measure children’s health-related quality of life

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Abstract

Objective

To examine the psychometric properties of an Internet version of a children and young person’s quality of life measure originally designed as a paper questionnaire.

Methods

Participants were 3,440 children aged 10 and 11 years in Northern Ireland who completed the KIDSCREEN-27 online as part of a general attitudinal survey. The questionnaire was animated using cartoon characters that are familiar to most children and the questions appeared on screen and were read aloud by actors.

Results

Exploratory principal component analysis of the online version of the questionnaire supported the existence of five components in line with the paper version. The items loaded on the components that would be expected based on previous findings with five domains—physical well-being, psychological well-being, autonomy and parents, social support and peers, and school environment. Internal consistency reliability of the five domains was measured using Cronbach’s alpha, and the results suggested that the scale scores were reliable. The domain scores were similar to those reported in the literature for the paper version.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the factor structure and internal consistency reliability scores of the KIDSCREEN-27 embedded within an online survey are comparable to those reported in the literature for the paper version.

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Notes

  1. The 13 European countries are Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, and Sweden [5].

Abbreviations

HRQoL:

Health-related quality of life

KLT:

Kids’ Life and Times

P7:

Primary 7

CHQ-CF:

Child Health Questionnaire Child Form

PCA:

Principal components analysis

KMO:

Kaiser–Meyer–Oklin

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast, University Road, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK

    Katrina Lloyd

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  1. Katrina Lloyd
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Correspondence to Katrina Lloyd.

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Lloyd, K. Kids’ Life and Times: using an Internet survey to measure children’s health-related quality of life. Qual Life Res 20, 37–44 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-010-9728-z

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