Reliability And Validity Of The Chinese Version Of The Vitiligo-specific Quality-of-life Instrument(VitiQol)

Background: Vitiligo is a common skin disorder characterized by loss of melanocytes in the skin,mucosa and hair follicles..People of different ethnicities,skin types,and sex appear to be equally affected.Although the condition has no effect on patients' longevity,the long treatment cycles and lack of pigment often cause problems for patients,which have major impacts on their health-related quality of life.The vitiligo-specific quality-of-life instrument(VitiQoL),recently developed by an American group,has been validated in America,Brazilian and Iranian patients.It was found to be a reliable patient-reported outcome measure in patients with vitiligo in those countries.Objective: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of VitiQoL.Methods: The VitiQoL was initially cross-culturally adapted to Chinese through the forward-backward translation.The Chinese version of the VitiQoL was then distributed to the vitiligo patients together with the Dermatology Life Quality Index(DLQI)and Skindex-16 questionnaire.The second survey was conducted after one week.Then the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the VitiQoL was assessed by SPSS.The reliability analysis included Cronbach's alpha and test-retest reliability.The validity analysis included content validity,construct validity,convergent validity and discriminant validity.Results: A total of 182 patients with vitiligo were recruited in the survey,and 102(56.04%)patients completed the second survey.The Chinese version of the VitiQoL showed high internal consistency(Cronbach alpha=0.958)and test-retest reliability(ICC=0.887).Convergent validity testing showed that the correlation coefficient for the Chinese VitiQoL and DLQI was 0.70(P<.01),the Chinese VitiQoL and Skindex-16 each was 0.84(P<.01).Confirmatory factor analysis revealed two important factors within the VitiQoL: participation limitation and stigma.Conclusions: The Chinese version of the VitiQoL questionnaire has sufficient validity andreliability to be used to evaluate the quality of life of Chinese patients with vitiligo...