Rasch Validation of the VF-14 Scale of Vision-Specific Functioning in Greek Patients

Ioanna Mylona, Vassilis Aletras, Nikolaos Ziakas and Ioannis Tsinopoulos
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Ioanna Mylona: 2nd Department of Ophthalmology, Aristotle University of Medicine, Papageorgiou General Hospital of Thessaloniki, Agiou Pavlou 76, Pavlos Melas, 564 29 Thessaloniki, Greece
Vassilis Aletras: Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia str., 564 36 Thessaloniki, Greece
Nikolaos Ziakas: 2nd Department of Ophthalmology, Aristotle University of Medicine, Papageorgiou General Hospital of Thessaloniki, Agiou Pavlou 76, Pavlos Melas, 564 29 Thessaloniki, Greece
Ioannis Tsinopoulos: 2nd Department of Ophthalmology, Aristotle University of Medicine, Papageorgiou General Hospital of Thessaloniki, Agiou Pavlou 76, Pavlos Melas, 564 29 Thessaloniki, Greece

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: The Visual Functioning-14 (VF-14) scale is the most widely employed index of vision-related functional impairment and serves as a patient-reported outcome measure in vision-specific quality of life. The purpose of this study is to rigorously examine and validate the VF-14 scale on a Greek population of ophthalmic patients employing Rasch measurement techniques. Two cohorts of patients were sampled in two waves. The first cohort included 150 cataract patients and the second 150 patients with other ophthalmic diseases. The patients were sampled first while pending surgical or other corrective therapy and two months after receiving therapy. The original 14-item VF-14 demonstrated poor measurement precision and disordered response category thresholds. A revised eight-item version, the VF-8G (‘G’ for ‘Greek’), was tested and confirmed for validity in the cataract research population. No differential functioning was reported for gender, age, and underlying disorder. Improvement in the revised scale correlated with improvement in the mental and physical component of the general health scale SF-36. In conclusion, our findings support the use of the revised form of the VF-14 for assessment of vision-specific functioning and quality of life improvement in populations with cataracts and other visual diseases than cataracts, a result that has not been statistically confirmed previously.

Keywords: visual functioning; VF-14; Rasch modeling; PROM; HRQOL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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