OBJECTIVES

: This study aimed to develop a health-related quality of life (HRQOL) tool adequate for measuring the HRQOL of Korean population and assess the validity and reliability of the tool.

METHODS

: To derive HRQOL dimensions and items, we conducted literature review, HRQOL items classification, and focus group discussions among healthy adults and expert consultations. The first survey was conducted to reduce the number of HRQOL items. In the survey, total respondents consisted of 600 respondents over 19 years old who were sampled in accordance with population structure by region, sex and age and 289 respondents who took part in the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. We performed t-test, ANOVA, linear regression and logistic regression. The second survey was conducted to evaluate validity by using 36-Item Short Form Health Survey version 2 (SF-36v2). Among 300 respondents, 100 respondents were retested 7 to 14 days after the second survey to demonstrate reliability using Cohen’s Kappa and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

RESULTS

: HRQOL Instrument with 8 items (HINT-8) was developed based on four health dimensions: physical, mental, social and positive health dimension. It consists of climbing stairs, pain, vitality, working, depression, memory, sleep, and happiness. The total score of HINT-8 was lower in female, older, low-income, and low-educated group. The items of climbing stairs, pain, vitality, and working in HINT-8 were more highly correlated with physical component summary (PCS) in SF-36v2 (r=0.570~0.668) than with mental component summary (MCS) (r=0.395~0.454). Depression and happiness of HINT-8 were more highly correlated with MCS (r=0.432~0.459) than with PCS (r=0.350~0.446). The Kappa values between 8 items were 0.565~0.799. The ICC were higher than 0.8.

CONCLUSIONS

: The present study developed HINT-8 and demonstrated known-groups, convergent and discriminant validity and test-retest reliability of HINT-8.