The Validity of a Single Item Scale: Health Related Quality of Life in Heart Failure Patients

Kim, Yongsuk

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of a single item scale by comparing a single item scale of health related quality of life to subscopes of the multi-item scales in the Medical Outcome Study Short Form-36 (SF-36), and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ). METHOD: The data from 103 patients with heart failure were analyzed. The statistics program SPSS 12.0 used for descriptive statistics.
RESULTS
Significant correlations were found between the single item scale and subscopes of SF-36, for physical functioning (r= .42), role physical (r= .22), general health perception (r= .46), vitality (r= .40), social functioning (r= .20) and mental health (r= .51), but not for body pain (r= .12) and role emotional (r= .06). Physical (r= -.41), emotional (r= -.49) and total scores (r= -.49) of MLHFQ were significantly related to the single item scale.
CONCLUSION
The single item scale of health related quality of life showed low to moderate correlation with multi-item scales. Even though the single item scale was correlated with several subscopes of multi-item scales, the correlation was not high, so we have to use caution when using the single item scale instead of multi-item scales.