394MO - Structure of QOLLTI-F in Chinese-speaking carers of palliative care patients

Background

Quality of life (QoL) is an important construct in palliative care, and the ultimate goal of palliative care services. Informal caregivers play a vital role in providing supportive care to the palliative care patients, yet their QoL may be seriously reduced and often neglected. As endorsed by the World Health Organization, caregivers’ QoL is an important final outcome of palliative care pathways. The 16-item Quality of Life in Life-Threatening Illness – Family carer version (QOLLTI-F) is an instrument developed to measure quality of life for carers of patients with life-threatening illness irrespective of specific disease. The scale has been translated and back-translated into Hong Kong Chinese (C-QOLLTI-F v3). This study aims to examine its psychometric properties in caregivers of palliative care patients in the Chinese population.

Methods

A survey was carried out with a convenience sample of 200 caregivers of palliative cancer patients in palliative wards of a teaching hospital between August 2022 and June 2023 in Hong Kong, and 194 provided complete responses to C-QOLLTI-F v3. A subsample of 81 caregivers completed the scale again after 48 hours. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the factorial structure, and Cronbach alpha values and intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) were calculated to assess reliability for the C-QOLLTI-F v3.

Results

The mean age of the caregivers was 55.3 years (SD=15.3), 49.0% were male, and 35.1% were spouse and 45.0% were children of the patients. Items 1 & 2 were removed from analysis because of low item-total correlation (<0.3). Exploratory factor analysis on the data of the remaining 14 items revealed a 3-factor solution, which has explained 51.64% of variance. Factor 1 (5 items) labelled as Carer’s own condition, Factor 2 (4 items) labelled as Carer’s stress and Factor 3 (5 items) labelled Carer’s feeling & outlook. Cronbach’s alpha values for the three dimensions ranged 0.68 - 0.75 and the ICC values ranged from 0.74 - 0.83 illustrating good reliabilities.

Conclusions

The findings provide support for the psychometric properties of the C-QOLLTI-F v3 in a Chinese sample of caregivers of patients receiving palliative care. The scale provides a useful tool to assess QoL of caregivers in this particular population.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.