AUTHOR=Fekete Laszlo , Iantovics Laszlo Barna , Fekete Gyula Laszlo 

TITLE=Validation of the DLQI questionnaire in assessing the disease burden and principal aspects related to life quality of vitiligo patients

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1333723

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1333723

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=According to many studies, vitiligo has a negative psychological influence on the patient's life. Factors that contribute to the severity of the vitiligo disease burden are multiple, among which the most important well-known factors are: self-esteem, stress, and stigma. We aimed to measure the importance of health-related life quality in assessing disease burden in patients with vitiligo.  This research is also a validation study of the DLQI questionnaire on persons who suffer from vitiligo. It was formulated the research question if whether DLQI has acceptable internal consistency by applying Cronbach's alpha internal consistency indicator (Cα). The obtained Cα=0.914 indicates excellent internal consistency. Also, we formulated the research question if all the questions of the questionnaire were mathematically consistent, which we finally proved. It was not necessary to remove any of the questionnaire questions.To prove HA a Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was applied, being verified the assumptions regarding the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and Convergent Validity (CV). HA has proved that the application of PAF on DLQI resulted in the extraction of a single general vitiligo latent factor of life quality, with initial eigenvalue= 5.671, SS Loadings=5.2, and 52 % of total cumulative variance explained. For analyzing the 10 formulated research questions diverse statistical analyses were applied. The results of the analysis of the research questions are presented and discussed in the manuscript. One of the conclusions related to the analysis of a research question is that sex has the lowest correlation with the latent life quality factor identified for vitiligo patients.