Development of Quality of Life Instrument for Urban Poor in The Northeast of Thailand
Phrutthinun Surit PhD*, Wongsa Laohasiriwong PhD*, Pattara Sanchaisuriya PhD*, Frank Perter Schelp PhD**
Affiliation : * Faculty of Public Health, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand ** Charite-Medical School, Berlin, Germany
Background : Measuring the quality of life is important for evaluation and prediction of life and social care
needs. To evaluate Quality of Life (QOL) in an urban poor population in northeast of Thailand, the Urban
Poor Quality of Life (UPQOL) instrument was developed.
Objective : To develop an initial instrument to measure urban poor QOL.
Material and Method: The development was started with literature review and investigated in urban poor
communities. The results were transformed into the items required to build a structured questionnaire. Five
hundred twenty three subjects, representatives of urban poor, were selected to test this instrument. Descriptive
statistics described feature of items and the samples, exploratory factor analysis conducted the items score,
and confirmatory factor analysis conducted the construct validity.
Results : The result found that the UPQOL instrument consisted of nine domains (education, income and
employment, environment, health, infrastructure, security and safety, shelter and housing, civil society and
political, and human rights domains) with egien value rank from 1.5 to 4.2 and 61 items with the factor
loading rank from 0.41 to 0.82. The internal consistency was 0.92. The correlation between items to domain
ranged from 0.30 to 0.72 and domains to overall QOL ranged from 0.27 to 0.84. Confirmatory factor analysis
showed that the structure fit all domains well. Domains and overall structure were good with CFI (> 0.95).The
internal consistency value ranged from 0.73-0.93. UPQOL scores were able to discriminate groups of subjects
with differences levels of QOL.
Conclusion : The UPQOL instrument is conceptually valid. The results support good validity and reliability. It
forms the basis for future testing and application in other settings.
Keywords : Quality of life, Urban Poor, Slum, Thailand
