The fertility quality of life (FertiQoL) tool: development and general psychometric properties(†)

Boivin, Jacky; Takefman, Janet; Braverman, Andrea

FertiQoL prototype: The FertiQol items were designed to translate abstract concepts (e.g. commitment, sense of belonging) into quantitative items that could collectively indicate the impact of fertility problems on QoL. Full details of item generation for the prototype are described in the Supplemental file and briefly presented here. As shown in Table I , item-generation involved four stages: generating potential items; eliminating redundant, irrelevant and outlier items; validation among people with fertility problems, and cross-cultural survey of acceptability and feasibility. A comprehensive literature review and consultation with psychosocial infertility experts generated an initial pool of 302 items on consequences of fertility problems on QoL in the following 14 areas (e.g. marriage/partnership, social network, emotions, cognitions, coping, treatment, physical health etc.). The authors classified the 302 items into three levels of increasing concept specificity: dimensions (e.g. interpersonal), domains (e.g. partner relationship) and facets (e.g. intimacy) to form groups of items tapping into related aspects of QoL. Classification and subsequent focus groups reduced this pool to 102 items, which were submitted to the acceptability and feasibility study (see Table I ). The prototype evaluated in the present study included these 102 Core items and 27 optional treatment items identified through the feasibility and acceptability phase.