Reliability and Validity of the Chinese Version of FACIT-AI, a New Tool for Assessing Quality of Life in Patients with Malignant Ascites

Objective: The study objective was to determine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Ascites Index (FACIT-AI). Methods: A forward-backward translation procedure was adopted to develop the Chinese version of the FACIT-AI, which was tested in 69 patients with malignant ascites. Cronbach's α, split-half reliability, and test-retest reliability were used to assess the reliability of the scale. The content validity index was used to assess the content validity, while factor analysis was used for construct validity and correlation analysis was used for criterion validity. Results: The Cronbach's α was 0.772 for the total scale, and the split-half reliability was 0.693. The test-retest correlation was 0.972. The content validity index for the scale was 0.8–1.0. Four factors were extracted by factor analysis, and these contributed 63.51% of the total variance. Item-total correlations ranged from 0.591 to 0.897, and these were correlated with visual analog scale scores (correlation coefficient, 0.889; P<0.01). Conclusions: The Chinese version of the FACIT-AI has good reliability and validity and can be used as a tool to measure quality of life in Chinese patients with malignant ascites.