Agreement between self- and proxy-reports on the Health-related Quality of Life of Primary School Children in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

BACKGROUND There is an on-going debate about who is the most appropriate informant for rating children’s health related quality of life (HRQOL) the children themselves or their parent-proxies. The aim of this work is to examinate if there are discrepancies between the children and the parents when both are asked for their perception in regards to the child’s HRQOL. METHOD The study was a cross-sectional survey by directly assessing primary school children and their parent-proxies. Participating were primary schools located in districts with good, normal and low social environment. The total sample consisted out of 395 primary school children (n = 199 from the third grade/ n = 196 from the fourth grade) ranging from 7 to 11 years and their parent proxy mainly the mothers. The assessment was performed with the KID-KINDLR and the FAS for the children and the parents version of KINDLR for the proxies. The Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and the Pearson’s correlation coefficient, as well as the paired t-test were applied for the statistical analysis.