Development and testing of a measure of health-related quality of life for men with urinary incontinence

OBJECTIVES

To describe the development and psychometric testing of male versions of the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI) and Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ).

DESIGN

Instrument development.

SETTING

Urology clinic at a large urban Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

PARTICIPANTS

Convenience sample of English-speaking community-dwelling male urology clinic patients who acknowledged concerns about urine leakage.

MEASUREMENTS

Content experts and male clinic patients evaluated items for clarity and fit. Revised instruments were administered to 153 participants. Data were analyzed to examine issues of feasibility of administration, internal consistency reliability, and validity.

RESULTS

Modal completion time for the Male Urogenital Distress Inventory (MUDI) (27 items) and Male Urinary Symptom Impact Questionnaire (MUSIQ) (32 items) was 20 minutes. Cronbach's coefficients were.89 for the MUDI and.95 for the MUSIQ. Total MUDI and MUSIQ scores were moderately correlated (r =.59, P <.001). Mean MUDI and MUSIQ scores varied significantly with self-reported desire for socialization, urine leakage, and depression. Principal components analyses suggested the presence of seven factors accounting for 65.4% of the variance in the MUDI and six factors accounting for 72.9% of the variance in the MUSIQ.

CONCLUSIONS

It is feasible to use the MUDI and MUSIQ to measure health-related quality of life in men with continence problems. The scores appeared to be reliable and valid in this racially and educationally diverse sample. Use of the MUDI and MUSIQ may provide more sensitive measurement of the specific effect of urinary incontinence and related symptoms on health-related quality of life in men. Future research should determine reproducibility and responsivity and reexamine the construct validity of these instruments.

Health-related quality of life measures for women with urinary incontinence: the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire and the Urogenital Distress Inventory. Continence Program in Women (CPW) Research Group

Urinary incontinence (UI) is a relatively common condition in middle-aged and older women. Traditional measures of symptoms do not adequately capture the impact that UI has on individuals' lives. Further, severe morbidity and mortality are not associated with this condition. Rather, UI's impact is primarily on the health status and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of women. Generic measures of HRQOL inadequately address the impact of the condition on the day-to-day lives of women with UI. The current paper presents data on two new condition-specific instruments designed to assess the HRQOL of UI in women: the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI) and the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ). Used in conjunction with one another, these two measures provide detailed information on how UI affects the lives of women. The measures provide data on the more traditional view of HRQOL by assessing the impact of UI on various activities, roles and emotional states (IIQ), as well as data on the less traditional but critical issue of the degree to which symptoms associated with UI are troubling to women (UDI). Data on the reliability, validity and sensitivity to change of these measures demonstrate that they are psychometrically strong. Further, they have been developed for simple, self-administration.