Reliability and validity of dermatology life quality index: assessment of quality of life in human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome patients with pruritic papular eruption

OBJECTIVE: To test the reliability and validity of dermatology life quality index (DLQI) in simplified Chinese language by assessing the quality of life (QoL) in HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)/AIDS (Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) patients with pruritic papular eruption (PPE). METHODS: A study of simplified-Chinese-version DLQI was carried out in Henan province, China. The reliability and validity were tested by means of statistical method. Data were processed with SPSS 19.0. RESULTS: One hundred and seven subjects participated in the study and 106 (99.07%) finished the questionnaire. Eighteen patients were mildly affected; 62 were moderately affected, 24 were highly affected, and 2 were extremely affected. Reliability analysis showed that the split-half reliability coefficient of questionnaire was 0.556 and the reliability of the full test estimated with Spearman-Brown. correction was 0.7146. The Cronbach alpha was 0.673. According to validity analysis, the correlation between the scores of items and the total scores ranged from 0.208 to 0.529 (P<0.05). Three factors were abstracted from10 questions with the principal component analysis and the contribution rate of the 3 common factors was 59.95%. CONCLUSION: The simplified-Chinese-version DIQL is an acceptable and valid scale for HIV/AIDS patients with PPE. It can be used to evaluate the QoL of HIV/AIDS patients with PPE in China. (C) 2013 JTCM. All rights reserved.