Development of quality of life scale in Chinese burn patients: Cross-cultural adaptation process of burn-specific health scale – brief

PurposeThis study was designed to develop and test a Chinese burn patient-specific quality of life (QOL) scale based on the burn-specific health scale – brief (BSHS – B) to provide an effective assessment tool to measure quality of life in Chinese burn patients.MethodDelphi method was used after the translation, back translation and pre-commissioning tests of BSHS – B, to amend the description of the items for cultural adaptation. The adapted Chinese version (ACV) of the BSHS – B was tested for internal consistency and validity of construct on a group of 271 burn patients from three major burn units in China.ResultsThirty-eight items within six domains of ACV BSHS-B were developed with scoring ‘0–4’ in each item. The mean total score for our study group was 98.36 (standard deviation (S.D.) = 37.86), ranging from 13 to 150. The total Cronbach's alpha value was 0.97 and total split-half reliability was 0.98, demonstrating that the internal consistency of the ACV was very high. Pearson correlations among the six domains of ACV BSHS – B were statistically significant. Exploratory factor analysis results showed that the six-factor function explained 78.30% of total variance; each entry in the corresponding domain had a factor-loading value higher than 0.4, indicating that the scale has a good validity.ConclusionThe ACV of the BSHS – B showed good reliability and validity, and can be used as a tool for assessing the QOL in Chinese burn patients.