[A French questionnaire to assess quality of life of the aphasic patient: the SIP-65]

Abstract

Objectives: To develop and demonstrate validity and reliability of a aphasic-adapted version of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP-136), a generic widespread questionnaire used to measure quality of life (QoL).

Design: Survey, outpatient oral interviews.

Population: Aphasic people from 20 to 80 years old, with a time from stroke or trauma of more than 12 months, living at home for more than six months, able to understand the questions with a Z-score profile at Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination above average for oral comprehension.

Method: 1. Developments of the short version of the SIP-136, from a first sample of aphasic people; 35 patients were included with a mean time from stroke or trauma of 17 months. This first step consisted in excluding the least relevant items and/or subscales, rewriting some items to make them easier to understand, studying redundancy by multiple components analysis (MCA) and deleting some redundant items. 2. Validity compared with initial SIP-136 and reliability (inter-rater and test-retest) from a second sample of 55 aphasic people (mean time from stroke or trauma = 23 months).

Results: - 1. The first step of development led to a short version with eight subscales and 65 items (SIP-65) exploring physical, psychological and social components of QoL; it took about 16 min to fill it, less than half of the time necessary for the SIP-136. 2. Linear correlation of the responses between SIP-65 and SIP-136 was good: r = 0.97; p < 10(-6). SIP-65 demonstrated a good test-retest (r = 0.97; p < 10(-6)) and inter-rater (r = 0.92; p < 10(-6)) reliability.

Discussion and conclusion: SIP-65, a short version of SIP-136, is feasible and clinically sound and must be recommended to assess health-related functional status of French aphasic people.