The pediatric quality of life inventory 4.0: A study on normal children and adolescents in India-a cross-sectional study

The purpose of this study was to find the applicability of Pediatric Quality Of Life Inventory (PedsQL) 4.0 (UK version) on Indian children, adolescents, and teenagers. The methodology was that 360 subjects and their parents were selected under four age groups (i.e., 2-4, 5-7, 8-12, and 13-18 years). The subjects and their parents were provided with the child/ teenage report and the parent report of the PedsQL 4.0, respectively. After all the reports were collected, the internal consistency reliability, construct validity, and feasibility were computed for the questionnaire. The results were that the paired correlation between the subject and the parent report showed r values for most of the items under the subcategories to be <0.3, indicating poor correlation. The Chronbach's alpha values for the physical, the emotional, and the total of all subcategories were >0.7, but that for all other subcategories were <0.7, indicating poor internal consistency and reliability. The correlation coefficient values were <0.5 for most of the items, indicating failure to establish the validity. The Pearson's coefficient for all the items was <0.005, indicating high feasibility. The conclusion is that PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales is not an applicable tool to evaluate the health-related quality of life for the children, adolescents, and teenagers in the context of the Indian population we studied and needs to be examined in other centers for validity.