Development and psychometric properties of the additional facets of the European Portuguese version of the WHOQOL-SRPB (Spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs)

Abstract

The WHOQOL-SRPB Group of the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the WHOQOL-SRPB, an instrument designed to assess the aspects relating to spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs of quality of life (WHOQOL-SRPB Group, 2006). The validation of the national versions of the WHOQOL-SRPB must follow the WHO/WHOQOL Group protocol, which consists in the following phases: (1) translation; (2) qualitative research; (3) development of response scales and (4) quantitative field study. This paper focuses in two studies with the following objectives: (1) to present the results of the qualitative phase with focus groups, which conducted to the development of the new facets of the European Portuguese version of WHOQOL-SRPB “ SP9. Relationship with others and SP10. Life style (Study 1); and (2) to present the psychometric properties of these two additional facets (Study 2). The qualitative study consisted of 12 focus groups and the quantitative field study comprised a sample of 606 participants. The results demonstrate the reliability and validity of the new Portuguese facets, and constitute an important and novel addition to the WHOQOL-SRPB questionnaire.