Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of Haem-A-QoL in Côte d'Ivoire

Cultural adaptation of the person-centered maternity care scale at governmental health facilities in Cambodia

BACKGROUND

In Cambodia, the importance of valuing women's childbirth experiences in improving quality of care has been understudied. This is largely because of absence of reliable Khmer tools for measuring women's intrapartum care experiences. Generally, cross-cultural development of those tools often involves translation from a source language into a target language. Yet, few earlier studies considered Cambodian cultural context. Thus, we developed the Cambodian version of the Person-Centered Maternity Care (PCMC) scale, by culturally adapting its original to Cambodian context for ensuring cultural equivalence and content validity.

METHODS

Three rounds of cognitive interviewing with 20 early postpartum women were conducted at two governmental health facilities in Cambodia. Cognitive interviewing was composed of structured questionnaire pretesting and qualitative probing. The issues identified in the process of transcribing and translating audio-recorded cognitive interviews were iteratively discussed among study team members, and further analyzed.

RESULTS

A total of 14 issues related to cultural adaptations were identified in the 31 translated questions for the Cambodian version of the PCMC scale. Our study identified three key findings: (i) discrepancies between the WHO recommendations on intrapartum care and Cambodian field realities; (ii) discrepancies in recognition on PCMC between national experts and local women; and (iii) challenges in correctly collecting and interpreting less-educated women's views on intrapartum care.

CONCLUSION

Not only women's verbal data but also their non-verbal data and cultural contexts should be comprehensively counted, when reflecting Cambodian women's intrapartum practice realities in the translated version. This is the first study that attempted to develop the tool for measuring Cambodian women's experiences during childbirth, by addressing cross-cultural issues.

Mapping the Haem-A-QoL to the EQ-5D-5L in patients with hemophilia

OBJECTIVE

This study's objective was to develop an algorithm that mapping the Haem-A-QoL scores to EQ-5D-5L utility scores in patients with hemophilia in China.

METHODS

A national sample of 862 patients with hemophilia completed both the EQ-5D-5L and Haem-A-QoL instruments. Eight regression models were selected to develop the mapping algorithm, they were: the ordinary least squares, general linear regression, Tobit regression, censored least absolute deviation, mixture beta regression, adjusted limited dependent variable mixture, the two-part, and robust MM-estimator model. Root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and R-square (R²) calculated using the tenfold cross-validation and random sample validation methods were used to assess the predictive ability of the models.

RESULTS

Based on RMSE, MAE, and R², the mixture beta regression model with selected Haem-A-QoL subscale scores as the predicted variables showed the best performance.

CONCLUSIONS

Our mapping algorithm bolsters the calculation of QALYs while conducting an economic evaluation of hemophilia-related interventions when only Haem-A-QoL data are available. The external validity of the algorithm should be further assessed in the other populations.

Evaluating the psychometric properties of the EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D among patients with haemophilia

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D, and to compare their performance among patients living with haemophilia in China.

METHODS

A total of 875 Chinese patients completed the EQ-5D-5L, SF-6D, and Haem-A-QoL questionnaires. Construct validity of the EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D dimensions and indices was assessed by testing hypotheses relating these measures to Haem-A-QoL and clinical measures. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used to assess convergent validity, and one-way analysis of variance (F statistic) was used to assess the known-groups validity (discriminatory power). The agreement between EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D indices was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and the Bland-Altman plot.

RESULTS

Both the EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D indices showed acceptable ceiling and floor effects. As hypothesised, both EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D were significantly correlated with Haem-A-QoL (both dimensions and overall score). EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D indices as well as EQ-VAS differentiated patients are known to differ in severity of haemophilia, bleeding status, disabling levels, and comorbidity. The F statistics in the known-groups comparisons suggested that the EQ-5D-5L was slightly more discriminative than the SF-6D. ICC (0.41) and Bland-Altman plot confirmed that the agreement between the EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D indices was poor.

CONCLUSION

Both EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D showed satisfactory construct validity in the measurement of the HRQoL among patients with haemophilia. However, the two instruments may not be used interchangeably in this patient population due to their poor agreement and differing discriminatory power.