[Quality of life questionnaire related to nutritional status]

To build and validate an instrument to measure the perceived quality of life in the nutritional status.

By focal groups and interviews with nutrition experts, the dimensions with greater affectation were identified. After the judge test, the CaVEN questionnaire was defined. For its valuation a multicentric study was performed, participating 7 Spanish hospitals. The internal structure of the questionnaire was evaluated by explanatory factorial analysis. Reliability was tested using the Cronbach α coefficient and the validity of the criteria with the nutritional Gold Standards.

A questionnaire of 26 items with 6 health dimensions was built. It was applied to 68 patients that were valued in the Nutrition Units. The test KMO was 0.756, showing a good accuracy in the Factorial Analysis. The existence of principal dimension of inertia was found (Bartlett p < 0.01). The 6 dimensions showed an accumulative variance of 77.670. It was observed a direct relationship in the Subjective Global Valuation and CaVEN (p < 0.01) and with the "Mini Nutritional Assessment Short" (p = 0.02), which was interpreted as the greater affectation of the nutritional status, the lower the quality of life detected by the CaVEN.

The CaVEN questionnaire has proved a useful tool for assessing the quality of life related to nutritional status, even in groups with little nutritional alterations.