The aim of this study was to determine the basic psychometric properties, reliability, and validity of the Kidney Disease Quality of Life-Short Form (KDQOL-SF) questionnaire in kidney transplant patients.

The reliability and validity of the instrument were determined in 418 kidney transplant patients followed in a single outpatient transplant centre.

Internal consistency of all the Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) domains was very good, and the Cronbach's alpha value was above .70 for all but three of the disease-specific subscales. We found significant, moderate to strong negative correlations between most of the KDQOL-SF domains and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies—Depression (CES-D) scores. Finally, substantial differences in KDQOL-SF scores were seen between groups of transplanted patients who were expected to be clinically different, supporting the discriminant validity of the KDQOL-SF instrument.

We propose that the KDQOL-SF is a reliable and valid tool and most of its subscales can be used to assess health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in kidney transplant patients and to compare HRQOL between different end stage renal disease (ESRD) patient populations.