Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues

Clinicians and policy makers recognize the importance of measuring health-related quality of life (HRQL) to make informed patient management and policy decisions. Self- or interviewer-administered questionnaires can be used to measure cross-sectional differences in quality of life among patients at...

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Main Author: Gordon H Guyatt
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 1997-01-01
Series:Canadian Respiratory Journal
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/1997/271269
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author Gordon H Guyatt
author_facet Gordon H Guyatt
author_sort Gordon H Guyatt
collection DOAJ
description Clinicians and policy makers recognize the importance of measuring health-related quality of life (HRQL) to make informed patient management and policy decisions. Self- or interviewer-administered questionnaires can be used to measure cross-sectional differences in quality of life among patients at a point in time (discriminative instruments) or longitudinal changes in HRQL within patients over time (evaluative instruments). Both discriminative and evaluative instruments must be valid (ie, measure what they are supposed to measure) and have a high ratio of signal to noise (reliability and responsiveness for the two instruments, respectively). Reliable discriminative instruments are able to differentiate reproducibly among persons. Responsive evaluative measures are able to detect important changes in HRQL over time, even if those changes are small. HRQL should also be interpretable B that is, clinicians and policy makers must be able to identify differences in scores that correspond to trivial, small, moderate and large differences.
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spelling doaj-art-4fc012f3b4b54157a640784595e419bd2025-02-03T00:58:54ZengWileyCanadian Respiratory Journal1198-22411997-01-014312313010.1155/1997/271269Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General IssuesGordon H Guyatt0Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, CanadaClinicians and policy makers recognize the importance of measuring health-related quality of life (HRQL) to make informed patient management and policy decisions. Self- or interviewer-administered questionnaires can be used to measure cross-sectional differences in quality of life among patients at a point in time (discriminative instruments) or longitudinal changes in HRQL within patients over time (evaluative instruments). Both discriminative and evaluative instruments must be valid (ie, measure what they are supposed to measure) and have a high ratio of signal to noise (reliability and responsiveness for the two instruments, respectively). Reliable discriminative instruments are able to differentiate reproducibly among persons. Responsive evaluative measures are able to detect important changes in HRQL over time, even if those changes are small. HRQL should also be interpretable B that is, clinicians and policy makers must be able to identify differences in scores that correspond to trivial, small, moderate and large differences.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/1997/271269
spellingShingle Gordon H Guyatt
Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
Canadian Respiratory Journal
title Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
title_full Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
title_fullStr Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
title_full_unstemmed Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
title_short Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life: General Issues
title_sort measuring health related quality of life general issues
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/1997/271269
work_keys_str_mv AT gordonhguyatt measuringhealthrelatedqualityoflifegeneralissues