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Measurement Equivalence of the KINDL Questionnaire Across Child Self-reports and Parent Proxy-reports: A Comparison Between Item Response Theory and Ordinal Logistic Regression

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Abstract

Measurement equivalence is a necessary assumption for meaningful comparison of pediatric quality of life rated by children and parents. In this study, differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is used to examine whether children and their parents respond consistently to the items in the KINDer Lebensqualitätsfragebogen (KINDL; in German, Children Quality of Life Questionnaire). Two DIF detection methods, graded response model (GRM) and ordinal logistic regression (OLR), were applied for comparability. The KINDL was completed by 1,086 school children and 1,061 of their parents. While the GRM revealed that 12 out of the 24 items were flagged with DIF, the OLR identified 14 out of the 24 items with DIF. Seven items with DIF and five items without DIF were common across the two methods, yielding a total agreement rate of 50 %. This study revealed that parent proxy-reports cannot be used as a substitute for a child’s ratings in the KINDL.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Grant Number 90-5845 from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences Research Council. This article was extracted from Zahra Sharafi’s Master of Science thesis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

    Peyman Jafari, Zahra Sharafi & Zahra Bagheri

  2. Department of Community Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

    Sara Shalileh

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  1. Peyman Jafari
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  2. Zahra Sharafi
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  3. Zahra Bagheri
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  4. Sara Shalileh
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Correspondence to Zahra Bagheri.

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Jafari, P., Sharafi, Z., Bagheri, Z. et al. Measurement Equivalence of the KINDL Questionnaire Across Child Self-reports and Parent Proxy-reports: A Comparison Between Item Response Theory and Ordinal Logistic Regression. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 45, 369–376 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-013-0407-5

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