Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Quality of Life in Autism Questionnaire (QoLA) from English into the Malay Language

ABSTRACT

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience a lower quality of life, which impacts on their children’s care, functioning and outcome and requires assessment and monitoring. Malaysia is a country presenting with an increasing prevalence of ASD and needs a linguistically and culturally appropriate quality of life measurement for parents of children with ASD. The Quality of Life in Autism Questionnaire (QoLA) is a validated ASD-specific quality of life measure in English. This paper describes the translation and the cross-cultural adaptation process of the QoLA from English into Malay. The translated Malay version of QoLA exhibited reasonable levels of internal consistency, cross-cultural validity, face and content validity; and is ready to be used with Malay speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• Malay translated
• parents of children with ASD
• quality of life scale
• cross-cultural translation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the participants and colleagues involved in the translation and cross-cultural adaptation process.

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest related to this article.

Additional information

Funding

The study received no funding from any source.

Notes on contributors

Iylia Dayana Shamsudin

Ms. Iylia Dayana Shamsudin designed the study, collected and analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. Dr. Ted Brown and Dr. Mong-Lin Yu designed the study and drafted the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the submitted manuscript.