Abstract
Objective: To illustrate reasons reported by kids for having “some”/“a lot of” troubles in each domain of the current Italian EQ-5D(Child) Version. Method: 415 participants (age: 8-15) were asked to explain why they reported having “some”/“a lot of” troubles in each domain, by means of open-answer questions. Statistically based lexical analyses where applied on the whole textual corpus drawn from open-answers. Results: Preliminary content analysis shows that difficulties with mobility (6.5% of the sample) frequently deal with physical impairments and injuries (e.g. pain to leg/feet, sprains). Difficulties with self-care (4.3%) are: stable physical/mental disabilities, but also not liking it, tiredness, being still incapable to dress and wash without parents' help. Difficulties concerning everyday activities (15.8%) deal with tiredness or stress due to overload of engagements, less frequently with pain (e.g., back-pain). Kids reporting ain/discomfort (39.0%) frequently complain with pain to back, stomach, head, arms or legs, pain/discomfort related to sport exercise (pain to muscles). The most frequent reasons for being orried/sad/unhappy (39.0%) deal with friends or family (e.g., because of sick or dead friends/relatives), school or competitions, physical impairments (e.g. back pain). Multiple correspondence analysis gives rise to a two-factors solution, whose first factor shows an opposition between words related to the domain 5 (psychological suffering) vs. all the other domains, in particular words related to domain 1 (physical impairments thwarting mobility), whereas the second factor discriminates between causes of difficulties at domain 2 (mental or physical disabilities) vs. domain 4 (head-ache, stomach-ache, localize pain). Conclusion: Results show that the current version of EQ-5D(Child) profile captures a variety of semantic fields related to children's well-being, discriminating in particular between social/relational vs. physical aspects of QoL. Analysis of open-answers appears to be an helpful tool in the validation and cross-cultural adaptation procedure of instruments for the assessment of QoL in paediatric populations.