Development of quality of life assessment instrument for gastric cancer patients (QLASTCM-Ga) based on traditional Chinese medicine

Objective To develop a quality of life assessment scale for gasric cancer patients (QLASTCM-Ga) based on traditional Chinese medicine and to evalucte its psychometric property.Methods The structured group method (nominal group and focus group) and the theory in developing rating scale were employed to establish the general and the specific module,respectively.The full instrument was formed by combination of two modules and psychometric properties (reliability,validity,and responsiveness) were evaluated by quality of life (QOL) data measured in 240 gastric cancer patients.Statistical methods used were correlation analysis,factor analysis and paired t test.Results Test-retest reliability of the overall scale and all domains were from 0.90 to 0.94,and internal consistency α were from 0.86 to 0.93.Correlation and factor analyses demonstrated that the scale was good in construct validity and known-group comparisons displayed a good clinical validity of the scale.Criterion-related validity was confirmed.wtih European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer-Quality of Life Questionnaire-Stomach Cancer (QLQ-STO 52) as the criterion.Statistically significant changes were found for each domain and the overall scale,with the standardized response means (SRMs) being close to those of QLQ-STO 52.Conclusion The QLASTCM-Ga could be used to measure QOL for patients with gastric cancer with good validity,reliability,and reasonable responsiveness.