Quality-of-life assessment in unselected oncologic out-patients - a pilot-study

The psychometric properties of the quality of lite questionnaire EORTC QLQ-C30 were assessed in 177 oncologic out-patients. For 6 of 9 scales the Cronbach alpha coefficient was >0.70, indicating adequate reliability. Also the validity as assessed by interscale correlation coefficients was considered to be adequate. Most of the patients' answers discriminated significantly between the patients with and without ongoing systemic anti-cancer treatment. The EORTC QLQ-C30 seems thus to be suitable for quality of life evaluation in oncologic out-patients. A module with 10-15 questions should be added which addresses the specific problems encountered by out-patients relating to communication between patient and physician, availability of service and patient's satisfaction.