Measuring life quality of pre-school children with the Kiddy-KINDLR

Over the last years, quality of life in children has emerged as an important concept in evaluating health care with respect to prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Most instruments which assess quality of life are specifically disease or condition designed. The Kiddy-KINDLR is the only instrument in the German language for assessing subjective generic health-related quality of life in preschoolers. The current paper gives an overview of generic measures in the German language and focuses on the Kiddy-KINDLR. The purpose is to examine the quality of the Kiddy-KINDLR and its practical use for assessing quality of life in younger children. In two randomized and controlled efficacy studies of universal and indicated prevention programs which prevent child behavior problems, 414 children were interviewed with the Kiddy-KINDLR. The Cronbach's Alpha of several subgroups varied from .66 to .70 for the total score. Quality of life was significantly associated with parenting behaviour, mother's life content, relationship quality, and child problem behavior. The Kiddy-KINDLR distinguishes between groups of several sociodemographic variables and is able to tell apart the universal and the indicated prevention group samples. Suitability of the Kiddy-KINDLR for researchers and practitioners seems to be given, however, restrictions are discussed.