Validation of the American version of the CareGiver Oncology Quality of Life (CarGOQoL) questionnaire

Sarah C. Kaveney, Karine Baumstarck, Patricia Minaya-Flores, Tarrah Shannon, Philip Symes, Anderson Loundou, Pascal Auquier
2016 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes  
The CareGiver Oncology Quality of Life (CarGOQoL) questionnaire, a 29-item, multidimensional, self-administered questionnaire, was validated using a large French sample. We reported the linguistic validation process and the metric validity of the English version of CarGOQoL in the United-States. Methods: The translation process consisted of 3 consecutive steps: forward-backward translation, acceptability testing, and cognitive interviews. The psychometric testing was applied to caregivers of
more » ... secutive patients with representative cancers who were recruited from the Regional Cancer Center in northwestern Pennsylvania. All individuals completed the CarGOQoL at baseline, day-30, and day-90. Internal consistency, reliability, external validity, reproducibility, and sensitivity to change were tested. Results: The translated version was validated on a total of 87 American cancer caregivers. The dimensions of the CarGOQoL generally demonstrated a high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha > 0.70 for all but four domain scores). External validity testing revealed that the CarGOQoL index score correlated significantly with all SF-36 dimension scores except the physical composite score (Pearson's correlation: 0.28-0.70). Reproducibility was satisfactory at day-30 (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.46-0.94) and day-90 (0.43-0.92). Four specific dimensions of CarGOQoL showed responsiveness: the Psychological well-being, the Relationships with health care system, the Social support and the Finances. Conclusions: The American version of the CarGOQoL constitutes a useful instrument to measure QoL in caregivers of cancer patients in the United-States.
doi:10.1186/s12955-016-0487-6 pmid:27233819 pmcid:PMC4884409 fatcat:itiug4p3jrbphlhvy3km5n4un4