Liver transplant recipients quality of life instrument: development and psychometric testing

Liver transplantation is a life-saving intervention for many patients with end-stage liver disease. In the past, evaluation of successful liver transplantation was based on patients' survival rate. However, in recent years this evaluation has been based on patients' quality of life. Various instruments have been developed to evaluate patients' quality of life. Nonetheless, scholars still believe that it is crucial to develop a standardized and disease specific instrument for evaluating the quality of life in liver transplant recipients.

The aim of this paper was to describe the development and psychometric testing process of a quality of life instrument specific to liver transplant recipients.

Initial items of this instrument were extracted from a conventional content analysis study, and then were completed with findings of related international literature. The face validity was assessed by interviewing with four liver transplant recipients, and the content validity was evaluated by eleven experts in the field of transplantation. The construct validity was achieved by involving 250 liver transplant recipients through exploratory factor analysis method, and reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha.

Three main factors with 40 items were extracted from the exploratory factor analysis: Health Satisfaction, Concerns, and Complications. Reliability of the instrument was confirmed (alpha = 0.922).

Given the special considerations regarding liver transplant recipients, this questionnaire is more accurate in evaluating the success of liver transplantation.