Validation of the Chinese Version of Quality of Life Instrument (QUALIDEM-C) for People With Dementia in Long-Term Care Home.

Objectives: To validate and examine the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of QUALIDEM (QUALIDEM-C).

Methods: The psychometric properties of the Chinese QUALIDEM were tested in a sample of 150 residents in long-term care homes. Concurrent validity, internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, test-retest reliability and factor structure were determined.

Results: QUALIDEM-C demonstrated good semantic equivalence with original version and good content validity. QUALIDEM-C showed satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbachs' alpha = 0.895), inter-rater reliability (ICC = 0.970) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.942). Acceptable concurrent validity was showed by consistently moderate correlations of QUALIDEM-C with generic and disease specific quality of life measures.

Conclusions: QUALIDEM-C is reliable and valid scales to measure quality of life of residents in long-term care home. Its applicability across residents with different levels of cognitive function favors its use over other measures in this context. It is potentially an effective tool, rather by multiple measures, to evaluate quality of life in future long-term care home research.