[Baker and Itagliata's Quality of Life Scale in a group of 139 schizophrenic patients: factorial analysis and evaluation of global validity]. / L'échelle de qualité de vie de Baker et Intagliata dans un groupe de 139 schizophrènes: analyse factorielle et examen de la pertinence de l'utilisation d'une note globale.

The Satisfaction with Life Domains Scale SLDS published by Baker and Intagliata in 1982 and translated in French by Chambon and al. is one of the most used rating scales in the field of Subjective Quality of Life (SQL) for patients suffering from schizophrenia. It comprises 16 scales in 7 points and Likert format exploring the following fields: home/apartment/place of residence, neighbourhood, food, clothes, health, people they live with, friends, love life, relationships with their family, how they get on with other people, job/work day programming, spare time, what they do in the community for fun, services and facilities in their area, economic situation, general quality of life. In this study we present results on SLDS about 139 schizophrenic patients (108 males, 31 females) recruited in two centers Lyon (n = 41) and Saint-Etienne (n = 98). The SLDS was a part of more comprehensive studies including evaluation of needs for care, social support, delivery and costs of services. Diagnosis were confirmed using either the SCAN and CATEGO program (n = 108) or the list of the ICD-10 criteria (n = 31) applied at time of inclusion or on the basis of a representative episode of the illness. Patients were classified in two groups, the S group (S, n = 53) for those patients presenting clinical features at time of inclusion excepted residual forms (F 20.5) and the non S group (N-S, n = 86) for those patients free of symptoms at the time of assessment. Non parametric statistics (U test and Kendall test) were used for comparisons between groups. The field by field comparison of the scores shows the poorest level of SQL for love life (m = 4.2; sd = 1.8) and economic status (m = 4.4; sd = 1.8). Comparisons between S and non-S groups show an average range systematically higher for the non-S group and significant differences for the following fields: food, friends, how they get on with other people. The same comparisons between males and females show no significant differences excepted for the following fields: love life, economic situation. Principal components analysis with Varimax rotation were performed and a 4 factors solution was considered as the best one. Before rotation the first factor accounts for 31% of the variance and comprises all the items with loading higher than 0.4 allowing us to consider the possibility of a global score. This global score is normally distributed (m = 95.1 sd = 17.3) and shows a significant difference between S and non S-groups (S m = 92.2 sd = 20.1; non S m = 99.6 sd = 15.4 p = .02) but not between centers and between males and females. After rotation the first factor comprises relationships with family, how they get on with other people, job/work/day programming, spare time, what they do for fun and life in general. The hypothesis of unidimensionality of QV has to be tested using the RASCH model.