The Multicultural Quality of Life Index: presentation and validation

Rationale and objectives Quality of life has emerged as a crucial concept for the assessment of health and the planning of health care. Desirable features for the evaluation of quality of life include comprehensiveness, self‐ratedness, cultural sensitivity, practicality and psychometric soundness. An attempt to meet these challenges led to the development of a brief multicultural quality of life instrument and to the appraisal of its applicability, reliability and validity. Methods The development of the proposed assessment instrument was based on a wide review of the literature and the engagement of a multicultural mental health scholarly team. Its validation was conducted on samples of psychiatric patients (n = 124) and hospital professionals (n = 53) in New York City. Results A new generic culture‐informed and self‐rate instrument, the Multicultural Quality of Life Index, has been developed. Its 10 items cover key aspects of the concept, from physical well‐being to spiritual fulfilment. Concerning its applicability, mean time for completion was less than 3 minutes and 96% of raters found it easy to use. Test–retest reliability was high (r = 0.87). A Cronbach's α of 0.92 documented its internal consistency and a factor analysis revealed a strong structure. With regard to discriminant validity, a highly significant difference was found between the mean total scores of professionals (x = 8.41) and patients (x = 6.34) presumed to have different levels of quality of life. Conclusions The Multicultural Quality of Life Index is a brief and culturally informed instrument that appears to be easy to complete, reliable, internally consistent and valid.