Reliability and validity of Chinese version of a tool to assess the quality of life in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in patients with interstitial lung disease

Objective:This paper aims to determine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of a tool that assesses the quality of life in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis(cATAQ-IPF)in patients with interstitial lung disease(ILD).Methods:We used the process of scale introduction to establish cATAQ-IPF.The content validity of the scale was evaluated by six experts.A total of 92 patients with ILD completed the cATAQ-IPF,St.George's respiratory questionnaire(SGRQ),and The Medical Research Council dyspnoea scale at the baseline,and 15 patients completed cATAQ-IPF at the follow-up period 2 weeks later.Thus,yielding data were used to assess various psychometric properties of cATAQ-IPE Intraclass correlation coefficient(ICC),Cronbach'sαcoefficient,content validity index(CVI),item-level CVI(I-CVI),Pearson's coefficients,criterion-relation validity,and known-group validity were used for data analysis.Results:The cATAQ-IPF showed excellent test-retest reliability(ICC=0.95),except for the therapy domain(Cronbach'sα=0.60)and acceptable internal consistency(Cronbach'sα=0.96 for the total).The scale-level CVI was 0.80,and the I-CVI was in the range of 0.78-1.00.The total cATAQ-IPF score was strongly correlated with the SGRQ total score(r=0.71,P<0.01).The cATAQ-IPF score of patients with ILD was 250.74±47.39,and that of patients with IPF was 287.90±22.56.Patients with IPF possessed considerable impairments in health-related quality of life according to the cATAQ-IPF score(t=4.94,P<0.01).Conclusions:The cATAQ-IPF is a reliable and valid instrument for the evaluation of quality of life of Chinese patients with various forms of ILD.