Assessment of quality of life in individuals with dysphagia: a questionnaire in Marathi

Abstract

The study aimed at developing a questionnaire for assessing quality of life in individuals with dysphagia. The study was carried out in two phases; rst phase included preparation of a questionnaire in English which was later translated to Marathi using forward and backward translation. In the second phase, the developed questionnaire was administered on thirty-ve adults with dysphagia. Item analysis was performed on scores obtained for each statement of the questionnaire by individuals with dysphagia. Eight items required deletion after inter-item correlation leaving 47 statements in the nal questionnaire, Dysphagia Quality of Life Questionnaire in Marathi (D-QOL-QM), which were divided into four sections; functional, eating, psychosocial and, physical section. Overall cronbach's alpha coecient was very high (a=0.93) which shows that the questionnaire has good reliablity. Results on Pearson's correlation showed good internal consistency and highly signicant moderate to high correlation for sections of questionnaire. This study provides a reliable clinical tool, D-QOL-QM, for assessing impact of dysphagia on individual's life in Indian scenario.