Cross-Cultural Validation of the Pediatric Quality of Lifeinventorytm3.0 Cardiac Module Arabic Language

Background Health -related quality of life had gained a major interest among researchers as a health outcome for all age groups, therefore, many scale had been developed to measure it. Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory TM 3.0 Cardiac Module is widely used measure and it has been translated into many languages Aim This study describes the process of translating this scale into the Arabic language, and to test its psychometric properties for cross-cultural validation. Methods The scale was translated from English to Arabic and back-translated through a panel of experts. The Arabic version was administered to healthy children and those with Congenital Heart Defects in Jordan. Statistical methods were used to test the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the PedsQL (3.0) Cardiac Module and its ability to discriminate between children in the mentioned groups. Results Cronbach's alpha coefficients for child self- and parent proxy-reports exceeded 0.6 for all subscale and total scale scores for the pre-test and post-test except for the perceived physical appearance of the child self-report pre-test form and the total score of the Parents' Proxy-scores Post-test form. Testing for discriminant validity showed that children and adolescents with congenital heart defects had a lower health- related quality of life than the healthy (control) group. Children and adolescents with congenital heart defect scores were lower in all domains of the PedsQL (3.0) Cardiac Module. Conclusions Initial testing of the Arabic version of the Peds QL (3.0) Cardiac Module suggests that the scale has good psychometric properties.