Development and psychometric validation of the 8-item Student Quality of Life Index (IQoL) using item response theory (IRT): a cross-sectional study among Brazilian higher education students

13 May 20265 min read0 viewsJournal Feed

GIST (Key Takeaways)

Objectives To develop and validate the 8-item Student Quality of Life Index (IQoL), a concise, multidimensional instrument for assessing quality of life (QoL) among higher education students in Brazil, encompassing psychological well-being, vitality and perceived functional capacity. Design Cross-sectional psychometric validation study using a split-sample approach for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), followed by bifactor item response theory (IRT) modelling and measurement invariance testing.
Setting A large-scale survey conducted across 32 private higher education institutions in 14 Brazilian states, covering diverse academic fields. To ensure representativeness, the medical student subgroup was calibrated using post-stratification weights to align sex and age distributions with national medical education demographics.
Participants A total of 10 844 undergraduate students completed the survey. Psychometric model development used 10 793 respondents with complete data for the candidate item pool included in the EFA/CFA/IRT pipeline.
Score distributions and subgroup comparisons used 10 838 respondents with complete information for sex, age group and course (3656 medical; 7182 other).

Clinical Editorial

Summary

BMJ Open published a clinical update in Research Highlights on 13 May 2026.

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