Method of validizing the methodology for assessing the quality of life, which is tied to the health of schoolchildren

Introduction. The study was conducted to validate the developed by the team of authors «Methods for assessing the quality of life related to health in middle school children». Methods. As a starting point, a Ukrainian-language adapted version of the questionnaire «List of children’s symptoms» was used, which is used to identify psychosocial dysfunction of children in children’s (Y-PSC) and parental (PSC) versions. According to the results of a parallel survey of 228 middle school students (103 boys and 125 girls), statistical data processing was performed using cluster analysis K-means, discriminant, canonical analysis and reliability analysis (Alpha Cronbach) by the licensed statistical software package IBM SPSS Statistics 22. Results. Processing by the data clustering method according to the Y-PSC and PSC questionnaire showed the best distribution into 3 clusters (the value of the F-test is 1% less than the maximum, but the standard error of the method is reduced by 32% from the maximum), which was confirmed by the discriminant analysis (total accuracy 96,4%) and canonical analysis (p < 0,15). In the pro-posed method of determining the quality of life associated with health, the division into 3 clusters met the requirement of statistical significance at the level of p < 0,05, and its total accuracy is 98,7%. Both methods proved to be reliable and accurate in terms of internal consistency, as evidenced by Cronbach’s alpha evaluation. Thus, with the high degree of clustering based on the survey, according to the original and proposed methods, the method of assessing the quality of life associated with health in middle school children has statistical significance at the level of p < 0,05 and can be used in group and population-based studies to determine the physical, mental and social well-being of schoolchildren based on self-assessment. Key words: Quality of life related to health; Middle school age; Schoolchildren; Psychosocial dysfunction; Validation.