Authors: Alain Leplège Jean François Schemann Bah Diakité Ousmane Touré Emmanuel Ecosse Yannick Jaffré Gérard Dumestre
Publish Date: 2006/07/07
Volume: 15, Issue: 8, Pages: 1373-1382
Abstract
In Mali blind and partially sighted people represent 12 of the population Good quality and low cost ophthalmologic care is available but unfortunately is insufficiently taken advantage of In order to contribute to the analysis of this situation a valid and reliable questionnaire was needed to take the patient’s perspective into account Because of face validity concerns it was not possible to merely translate an existing questionnaire Thus we decided to develop a new questionnaire directly in one of the main languages of Mali Bambara This involved the setting of a study team composed of social and health science specialists the majority of whom were native Bambara speakersThe overall project consisted in the iteration of three main steps 1 Conceptual clarification and operationalization of this concept 2 Qualitative steps qualitative interviews focus groups and content analysis 3 Quantitative steps statistical analysis of an initial tryout survey 143 participants and a validation survey 420 participantsThis approach yields satisfying results Indeed the final version of the IOTAQOL has good psychometric properties Thus this interviewer administered instrument can be used to measure healthrelated qualityoflife in Mali and the methodology that we used could serve as a basis for similar projects
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