Quality of life among Old age people in Bahir Dar City, Northwest Ethiopia, 2021

Introduction: Reliable quality of life assessment is critical for identifying health issues, evaluating health interventions, and establishing the best health policies and care packages. The World Health Organization Quality of Life-Old Module is a tool for assessing the subjective quality of life in old age people. It's validated and available in more than 20 languages, except Amharic. Hence, this study was intended to translate it into Amharic language and validate it among old age people in Bahir Dar City, Ethiopia.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 180 community-dwelling old age people in Bahir Dar City, Northwestern Ethiopia, from January 16 to March 13, 2021. Psychometric validation was achieved through Cronbach’s alpha of the internal consistency reliability test, and construct validity from confirmatory factor analysis.
Results: The study participants aged from 60 to 90 years old with a mean age of 69.44. Females made up 61.7% of the population and 40% of them could not read and write. The results showed a relatively low level of quality of life, with the total transformed score of 58.58 ± 23.15. The Amharic version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Old Module showed a Cronbach’s Alpha value of 0.96 and corrected item-total correlations of more than 0.74. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the six-factor model with a chi-square (X2) of 341.98 with a p-value less than 0.001. The comparative fit index (CFI) was 0.98, Tucker-Lewis’s index (TCL) was 0.97, and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.046.
Conclusion: The Amharic version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Old Module indicated good internal consistency reliability and construct validity. The tool can be utilized to provide care to Ethiopian community-dwelling old age people.