Development and psychometric evaluation of the TAPQOL: A health-related quality of life instrument for 1-5-year-old children

The 43-item TNO-AZL Preschool Children Quality of Life (TAPQOL) questionnai re was developed to meet the need for a reliable and valid instrument for m easuring parent's perceptions of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in preschool children. HRQoL was defined as health status in 12 domains weight ed by the impact of the health status problems on well-being. The aim of th is study was to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TAPQOL. A samp le of 121 parents of preterm children completed the TAPQOL questionnaire (r esponse rate 88%) as well as 362 parents of children from the general popul ation (response rate 60%). On the base of Cronbach's alpha, item-rest corre lation, and principal component analysis, the TAPQOL scales were constructe d from the data for the preterm children sample. The psychometric performan ce of these scales was evaluated for both the preterm children sample and t he general population sample. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.66 to 0.88 for the preterm children sample and from 0.43 to 0.84 for the general populati on sample. The unidimensionality of the separate scales was confirmed by pr incipal component analysis for both the preterm children sample and the gen eral population sample. Spearman's correlation coefficients between scales were, on average, low. T-tests showed that the very preterm children, the c hildren with chronic diseases, the less healthy and the less happy children had lower mean scores on the TAPQOL scales than healthy children, indicati ng a worse quality of life. This study shows that the TAPQOL is a reliable and valid parent's perception of HRQoL in preschool children. More research is needed to evaluate the psychometric performance of the TAPQOL in differ ent clinical populations.