Agreement between the WHOQOL-BREF Chinese and Taiwanese versions in the elderly

The brief version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument (WHOQOL-BREF), including four domains, has been culturally adapted into Taiwan Chinese and Taiwanese versions for different targeted populations of elderly people. However, there is no evidence to suggest whether the results obtained from these two language versions can be directly compared or combined. This prevents the use of both versions together, which leads to missing data and a gap in the interpretation of results. The present study therefore examined agreement between the Taiwan Chinese and Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF in a group of 53 Taiwanese-speaking elderly people who can read Chinese. Each participant was evaluated using both versions in a random order within a 2-week period. There was acceptable agreement in 17 of the 28 items between both versions. Three of the four domain scores demonstrated moderate to high levels of agreement (0.65 ≤ intraclass correlation coefficient ≤ 0.81), with the exception being the social relationships domain. The results indicate that these three domain scores in the Taiwan Chinese and Taiwanese versions of the WHOQOL-BREF appear to be substantially equivalent, which allows direct comparison/combination of the results.