Short-form quality care questionnaire-palliative care has acceptable measurement properties in Brazilian cancer patients

BACKGROUND: Our objective was to perform the translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation of the Quality Care Questionnaire-Palliative Care (QCQ-PC) into Brazilian Portuguese for cancer patients in palliative care. The translation and cross-cultural adaptation comprised the following stages: translation, synthesis of translations, back-translation, analysis by a committee of experts, testing of the pre-final version, and definition of the final version. The evaluated measurement properties were: structural validity using factor analysis, test–retest reliability using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha, and construct validity using the correlations between the QCQ-PC and other questionnaires already validated in Brazil. RESULTS: Two hundred and twenty-five cancer patients were included for validity analyses, and a subsample of 30 patients was used for test–retest reliability. The most adequate fit indexes were for the short version of the QCQ-PC (SF-QCQ-PC), with two domains and 12 items. There was adequate reliability and internal consistency, with values of the ICC ≥ 0.83 and Cronbach’s alpha ≥0.82. There were correlations > 0.30 between the SF-QCQ-PC and the Karnofsky Performance Scale, the Palliative Prognostic Index, the sadness domain of the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System, the Barthel Index, and all domains related to the McGill Quality of Life Questionnaire and the European Organization for Research in the Treatment of Cancer Questionnaire-core. CONCLUSION: The short version of the SF-QCQ-PC has acceptable psychometric properties for use in Brazil. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12904-021-00745-y.