Abstract
Objectives: To describe children's views about their Quality of Life (QoL) by means of open-answers, as a part of the validation procedure of the Italian version of EQ-5D(child), within the EuroQoL child-task-force. Methods: 415 valid children/adolescents sampled from general population (aged 8–15) self-completed a set of instruments/questions including EQ-5D(child), and were asked: a) to explain why they reported having some/a lot of difficulties at each EQ-5D profile domain (if they had); b) if not, to imagine why youths aged like them might report having difficulties. Textual corpus resulting from open answers was submitted to multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), to show relationships of proximity/distance between the semantic fields associated with each domain. Results: The first factor extracted by MCA (inertia explained: 38.17%) discriminates between words related to the domain 5 (Feeling Worry, Sad or Unhappy: school troubles, relationships with friends, illness/death of close relatives) vs. words related to domain 1 (Mobility: physical impairments, fractures, sprains). The second and the third factors (inertia: 28.83% and 19.89%) discriminate between causes of difficulties at domain 2 (Taking care of myself: mental or physical disabilities) vs. domain 4 (Having pain or discomfort: head-ache, stomach-ache, accident). The last factor illustrates difficulties related to domain 3 (Doing usual activities: tiredness because of sports training, excess of daily commitments, lack of willingness). 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 in the validation project for EQ-5D(child) is allowing the EuroQoL child-task-force to optimize validity and reliability of this instrument for the assessment of QoL in paediatric population.