Klaske van Sluis

Interaction of functional and participation issues on quality of life 99 6.3 Results 6.3.1 Respondents The demographic characteristics of the respondents are shown in Table 6.1. In total, 1705 clients completed the questionnaire (response rate of 21%), of which the majority were from United States, France, The Netherlands, United King- dom, Germany and Italy. A minority of the respondents were from Sweden, Brazil and Spain. Of 1624 respondents, we obtained the complete demographic information, including the more personal information, such as sex, age, and employment status ( n =81 respondents did not give consent to provide this information). Type of voice rehabilitation was not in the scope of this ques- tionnaire. Most respondents are male (male-to-female ratio 5:1) with a median age in the 60-69 bracket, and have had their TL procedure in the last five years (median 5 years ago). The distribution of age between countries is very comparable. The education level of the respondents, however, varies between countries, with 68% of respondents having tertiary education in the US, versus only 43% of respondents in The Netherlands and Italy. Figure 6.1: Distribution of the self-reported rating of overall health and independence (the score of 0 is the worst imaginable situation, the score of 10 is the best imaginable situation). Due to rounding off, the sum doesn’t add to 100%. 6.3.2 r-QoL rating Figure 6.1 shows the distribution of the two separate rating scales (scale 0-10) of which this combined r-QoL rating consists; a score of 7 (out of 10) or higher was given by more than 50% of the respondents for their overall health and independence. Age and time since TL procedure have a significant influence (a negative relation p =.004, and a positive relation p < .001, respectively) on the overall health rating, and time since laryngectomy has a significant influence on the independence rating (negative relation p ≤ .001). Since the overall health and independence ratings have a high internal cor- relation and were combined to one sum measure, from now on they will be