Psychometric properties of the Parkinson’s disease Questionnaire−39 and its short form Parkinson’s disease Questionnaire−8: A systematic review and meta-analysis

•PDQ-39 demonstrated to be a disease-specific HRQoL questionnaire.•PDQ-8 is a practical and informative instrument that can be easily used in clinical settings.•Few studies investigated responsiveness of the scales, to relieve changes in the QoL of PwP. Parkinson’s disease (PD) affects Quality of Life (QoL), since it is responsible for cognitive impairment, non-motor, and motor symptoms. Outcome measures are fundamental for evaluating treatment’s effect on QoL over time. This systematic review aimed to identify the psychometric properties of PDQ-39 and PDQ-8 in the different populations in which they were validated. The electronic databases systematically searched are MEDLINE (via PubMed), CINAHL, SCOPUS, and Web of Science; the research was conducted in July 2023. The psychometric properties considered were those of the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) checklist. Risk of bias was assessed using the COSMIN checklist. The search identified 1306 articles. 398 duplicates were eliminated; 908 articles were analyzed reading title and abstract; 799 were finally excluded because used PDQ-39 and PDQ-8 as outcome measures or were not dealing with psychometric properties; 66 articles were excluded after reading the full text. 43 articles were included in the review; meta-analysis showed all the Cronbach’s alpha values were statistically significant for all the subscales of PDQ-39 and PDQ-8. PDQ-39 demonstrated to be a specific HRQoL questionnaire that is correlated with generic HRQoL questionnaires, in fact in many studies included in the review, correlations with SF-36 were found. In the last studies about psychometric properties of PDQ-8 emerged that it is a practical and informative instrument that can be easily used in clinical settings, especially in busy ones, but also in large-scale studies in which a brief instrument would be preferred.