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Measurement properties of the Adolescent Quality of Life Mental Health Scale (AQOL-MHS)

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Abstract

Background

This article presents data on the psychometric properties of a new measure, the Adolescent Quality of Life Mental Health Scale (AQOL-MHS), designed to measure quality of life in clinical samples of Latino adolescents aged 12–18 years. Participants were recruited in Puerto Rico to have one of five prevalent mental health disorders. The initial instrument development was achieved through a grounded theory approach with the use of focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Methods

We conducted two stages of exploratory factor analyses (EFA) on 60 candidate items. The first stage was to establish the number of factors to extract, and the second was to improve the model by selecting the best items. A final EFA model retained 31 items and 3 factors labeled Emotional Regulation (11 items), Self-Concept (10 items) and Social Context (10 items).

Results

The instrument showed good internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and construct validity. The hypotheses-driven validity tests were all supportive of the AQOL-MHS. There was evidence for convergent validity and discriminant validity, and results for known-groups’ validity were overwhelmingly supportive of the ability of the instrument to identify differences between groups.

Conclusions

These preliminary findings support our conceptual model and the use of the AQOL-MHS domain and overall scores. We believe that this instrument will provide clinicians additional insight into the different aspects of quality of life that are important to adolescents with mental health problems. Therefore, we consider the AQOL-MHS a vital patient-centered outcome measure for assessment strategies in the prevention and treatment of this population.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Puerto Rico MSC, San Juan, PR, USA

    Ligia M. Chavez, Rafael Ramirez, Pedro Garcia, Glorisa Canino, Karen Mir & Nyrma Ortiz

  2. Group Health Research Institute, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle, WA, USA

    Leo S. Morales

  3. Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Leo S. Morales

Authors
  1. Ligia M. Chavez
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  2. Rafael Ramirez
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  3. Pedro Garcia
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  4. Glorisa Canino
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  5. Karen Mir
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  7. Leo S. Morales
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Correspondence to Ligia M. Chavez.

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Chavez, L.M., Ramirez, R., Garcia, P. et al. Measurement properties of the Adolescent Quality of Life Mental Health Scale (AQOL-MHS). Qual Life Res 23, 1327–1335 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-013-0579-2

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