ISSN: 2155-9570
Kholoud A Bokhary, Maha M. Alenezi, Khalid F. Jamous, Saif Alobaisi, Majd D. Alotaibi, Rania Fahmy
Introduction: Visually impaired children are in need of special education and low vision services to maintain good Vision- Related Quality of Life (VRQoL). Visual impairment has long life implications for both children and their families. We aim to validate the Arabic Questionnaire version of the Impact Visual Impairment Children (IVI-C) on children with visual impairment children.
Methods: This cross sectional study included children aged between 8-18 years old with best corrected visual acuity <0.3 log MAR were recruited from low vision clinics at three capital hospitals in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were assessed. The English IVI-C Questionnaire was translated to Arabic language then translated back to English to guarantee the meaning of each item was consistent. Children were requested to answer each item of the translated Questionnaire using five responses scale. Rasch analysis was used to test the validity and reliability of the questionnaire.
Results: Person reliability (0.83) and separation (2.21) were improved with a mean difference of (0.43) between person and difficulty items. Cronbach alpha was (0.88) with a mean difference of (0.31) between person and difficulty items. The infit item was ranged from 1. 23 to 0.75; and outfit item was ranged from 1.32 to 0.71, which indicated good psychometric properties of the validated questionnaire Skew and kurtosis values were within normal limits (-2.00 to +2.00).
Discussion and implication for Practitioners: The 14-items Arabic IVI-C questionnaire is valid, reliable and one-dimensional tool to assess vision-related quality of life for school age children with visual impairment.