[Assesment or the basic psychometric properties for the Portuguese version of the KDQOL-SF]

To verify the reliability of the instrument Kidney Disease Quality of Life Short Form - KDQOL-SF, and correlate scores in each dimension with the sociodemographic and clinical variables.

This is a methodological descriptive exploratory study, where the KDQOL-SF was applied by interviewing 147 chronic renal disease patients during treatment in a hemodialysis clinic in the interior of São Paulo State. Data was processed by descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha and ordinal logistic regression analyses.

Results showed that of the 147 patients who answered the KDQOL-SF, the majority was male, with an average age of 51.8 +/- 14.2 years and that 75.5% of them had only elementary schooling. Regarding reliability of the KDQOL-SF verified by the Cronbach's alpha, values ranged between 0.6 and 1.0 for 18 of the 19 dimensions that comprise the instrument. Only the dimension 'Professional Role' showed an extremely low value. When the KDQOL-SF was correlated with sociodemographic and clinical variables, there was an association of some dimensions with age, gender, educational level and with pathologies associated to renal disease.

The KDQOL-SF was shown to be reliable to ascertain the quality of life in individuals with chronic renal failure under hemodialysis treatment.