Abstract
Objectives: The instruments Disabkids and Kidscreen are intercultural developed questionnaires assessing health related quality of life of children and adolescents. While the questionnaire Disabkids has been designed for children and adolescents suffering from a chronic disease, the questionnaire Kidscreen can be applied for diseased as well as healthy children. In this study, the sensitivity to change of both instruments is compared, in the context of inpatient rehabilitation for children with chronic diseases.
Methods: In three medical inpatient rehabilitation treatment centres for children and adolescents n = 109 patients completed the questionnaires Disabkids (27 item chronic generic module) and Kidscreen (27 item version) at the measuring points “beginning of rehabilitation” (t0) and “3 weeks after beginning of rehabilitation” (t1). The collected data was analysed and compared by using a t-test for independent samples and by measuring effect sizes.
Results: The questionnaire Disabkids recorded a significant increase in quality of life in 4 out of 6 scales. Thus, evidence for effect sizes between 0.20 and 0.40 could be shown for most of the scales. In Kidscreen, however, merely the scale “physical well-being” shows a significant improvement of quality of life. In general, variations in the questionnaire Kidscreen turned out with smaller effect sizes (0.00–0.68), but still the strongest effect of the two questionnaires can be found in the Kidscreen scale “physical wellbeing”.
Conclusion: Within the presented study, improvements in quality of life of diseased children and adolescents during inpatient rehabilitation were captured through a high number of scales by the questionnaire Disabkids whereas the questionnaire Kidscreen could only reflect change on one scale. These results seem coherent with the differences in the conceptual orientations of both instruments.
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