Validation of the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Questionnaire with Parents of Children with Autistic Disorder

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 44; no. 9; pp. 2257 - 2263
• Main Authors: Dardas, Latefa A., Ahmad, Muayyad M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-09-2014; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult; Autism; Autistic Disorder - physiopathology; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child clinical studies; Developmental disorders; Disabled Persons; Environmental Influences; Evaluation; Factor Analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Factor Structure; Female; Health Programs; Humans; Infantile autism; Male; Measurement Techniques; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Neurosciences; Original Paper; Parents; Parents & parenting; Pediatrics; Pervasive Developmental Disorders; Physical Health; Psychological aspects; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychometrics; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Public Health; Quality of Life; Quantitative psychology; Questionnaires; Sample size; Secondary Schools; Semantics; Semitic Languages; Surveys and Questionnaires; Test Validity; Translation; Translations; Validity; World Health Organization; Psychometrics; Factor analysis; Autistic Disorder; WHOQOL-BREF; Quality of life; Human; Autism; Questionnaire; Parent; Developmental disorder; Child; WHO
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-014-2110-1

The World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Questionnaire-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) has been used in many studies that target parents of children with Autistic Disorder. However, the measure has yet to be validated and adapted to this sample group whose daily experiences are considered substantially different from those of parents of children with typical development and parents of children with other disabilities. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the psychometric properties and the theoretical structure of the WHOQOL-BREF with a sample of 184 parents of children with Autistic Disorder. The factor structure for the WHOQOL-BREF was examined using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Our analyses provided no evidence of a better model than the original 4-domain model. Nevertheless, some items in the measure were re-distributed to different domains based on theoretical meanings and/or clean loading criteria. The new model structure gained the measure’s required validity with parents of children with Autistic Disorder.