A physical symptom-based measure of quality of care for children affected by HIV/AIDS

ABSTRACT

Based on cross-sectional data of 1,625 children aged 6–18 years who were affected by parental HIV/AIDS in central rural China, we evaluated a physical symptom-based measure of the quality of care (QOC_PS) for these children. The QOC_PS has acceptable reliability estimates for children of both genders, at a different ages, and by orphanhood status. Known-group validation and construct validity analysis demonstrated a good validity of QOC_PS indicator. The QOC_PS score was significantly associated with psychosocial well-being measures among children. The physical symptom-based measure provides a psychometrically appropriate indicator of quality of care for children affected by HIV/AIDS in China. It could be used as an alternative measure to assess the quality of care in resource-poor settings where other objective measurements are not available or feasible. Future research is needed to further validate the scale among children in different living environments across various cultural settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Children affected by HIV/AIDS
• quality of care
• psychometric evaluation
• China

Acknowledgments

The study described in this report was supported by NIH Research Grants R01MH76488 and R01NR13466 by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors want to thank Joanne Zwemer for assistance with manuscript preparation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Health [R01MH76488, R01NR13466].