Development and Preliminary Evaluation of the Vitiligo Quality of Life Scale for the Chinese language: the CVQLS study

Introduction: Current research shows that there is no vitiligo quality of life measurement instrument suitable for Chinese patients. To develop a quality of life measurement instrument for Chinese vitiligo patients and to conduct a preliminary evaluation for reliability, validity, and discriminative ability. Methods In this study, the item pool was created through a comprehensive review of relevant literature, focus group discussions and Brainstorming. Two rounds of Delphi expert consultation and a semi-structured interview were conducted to modify the item pool and form the draft scale. Two rounds of questionnaire investigations were used to select items and form the final scale. The Reliability, validity, and discriminative ability were evaluated based on the third round of investigation. Results The scale contains 3 dimensions and 25 items, and the total cumulative variance contribution rate was 64.54%. The Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.972; the split-half reliability coefficient was 0.950 and the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.776. The correlation coefficient with the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) was 0.652. The scores were correlated with patient characteristics, including gender, disease course, disease stage, Body Surface Area (BSA), and white spot area. Conclusion This study developed the Chinese Vitiligo Quality of Life Scale (CVQLS) to measure the quality of life of vitiligo patients in China. Preliminary results indicate that the CVQLS has good reliability, validity, and discriminative ability.