Development and evaluation of a health-related quality of,life questionnaire for the elderly with dementia in Japan

Objectives The purpose of this study was the development of the quality of life (QOL) questionnaire for dementia (QOL-D) in Japan. Methods We performed a questionnaire survey of QOL assessment in elderly patients with dementia in Japan, and developed QOL-D. Results The final version consists of only 31 items grouped into six response sets, each with its own scale. Reliability is good to excellent, and validity is, to some extent, established. The six domains of health-related QOL are divided into two groups. One is the positive and the other is the negative aspects of health-related QOL. The positive aspects have been shown to correlate positively with cognitive function and activities of daily living (ADL) score, whereas the negative aspects have not. The concept of QOL for elderly patients with dementia in Japan is similar to that in Western countries. Conclusion We demonstrated that QOL-D is a reliable and valid instrument for QOL assessment in elderly patients with dementia in Japan. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.