Validation of the World Health Organization quality of life instrument in patients with HIV infection

Abstract

We studied the reliability and validity of the World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL) assessment instrument in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. WHOQOL-BREF was used to assess 136 HIV-infected outpatients. The results were analyzed and compared with data from 213 healthy persons. The Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency ranged from 0.74 to 0.85 across domains in HIV-infected patients. The test-retest reliability ranged from 0.64 to 0.79 across domains at average 4-week retest interval. Factor analysis identified four major factors: social, psychological, environment, and physical, consistent with the four domains of the instrument. The scores of all four domains correlated positively with self-evaluated health status and happiness (r range: 0.52-0.60 and 0.55-0.73 across domains, respectively), and correlated negatively with the number and severity of symptoms (r range: -0.40 to -0.47 and -0.41 to -0.52, respectively). The scores of physical, psychological and social domains, but not the environment domain, discriminated between healthy persons and HIV-infected patients (all p < 0.01). We conclude that the WHOQOL-BREF can be a useful quality-of-life instrument in patients with HIV infection.