Quality of Life, Functional Assessment of Cancer
Therapy-General
VORACHAI RATANATHARATHORN,M.D.*,
MANMANA JIRAJARUS, MSN. **,
JEDSADA MANEECHAVAKAJORN, M.D.****,
THITIY A SIRISINHA, M.D.*
SUWANNEE SIRILERTTRAKUL, M.Ed. **,
CHATCHAWAN SILPAKIT, M.D., Ph.D.***,
PORN CHAN SAILAMAI, MSN. *****,
Affiliation : * Medical Oncology Unit, Department of Medicine,
** Nursing Department,
*** Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400,
**** Medical Oncology Unit, Department of Medicine, Rajvithi Hospital, Bangkok 10400,
***** Nursing Department, National Cancer Institute (Thailand) Bangkok 10400, Thailand.
AbstractResearch on quality of life (QOL) in Thailand is still in its developing stages and requires
cross-culturally valid QOL questionnaires to appropriately assess QOL as an endpoint in research
and clinical trials. The English-language version of the FACT-G (Version 4) questionnaire was
translated into Thai using an iterative forward-backward translation process. To detennine if this
instrument could cross a broad cultural divide and be used in Thailand, the reliability and validity
of its Thai version was studied. The translated questionnaire was administered to 364 cancer
patients. In evaluating its psychometric properties, internal consistency by Cronbach' s alpha and
test I retest reliability measured by Spearman rank-correlation coefficients were used. Cronbach's
alpha coefficient ranged from 0.75 to 0.90. Spearman rank-correlation coefficient value for global
QOL was 0.80. Validity was checked using two methods: factor analysis and known-groups com-
parison. Known-groups comparison analysis showed discrimination between subgroups of patients
differing in clinical status as defined by disease stage (stage 1/ll vs stage 111/lV, p < 0.001), treat-
ment status (active treatment vs no treatment, p < 0.05), and financial burden (yes vs no, p <
0.001). In conclusion, the finding of this study indicate that the Thai versfon of the Functional
Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) is a reliable and valid measure of quality of life
in cancer patients and can be used in clinical trials and studies of outcomes research in oncology.
Keywords : Quality of Life, Validation, Psychometric, Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-
General, Translation Methodology, Thai Version
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