ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper was to report tests of the validity and reliability of a new instrument, the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL)-8D, which was constructed to improve the evaluation of health services that have an impact upon the psychosocial aspects of the quality of life.MethodsAustralian and US data from a large multi-instrument comparison survey were used to conduct tests of convergent, predictive and content validity using as comparators five other multi-attribute utility (MAU) instruments—the EQ-5D, SF-6D, Health Utilities Index (HUI) 3, 15D and the Quality of Well-Being (QWB)—as well as four non-utility instruments—the SF-36 and three measures of subjective well-being (SWB). A separate three part Australian survey was used to assess test–retest reliability.ResultsResults indicate that AQoL-8D correlates more highly with both the SWB instruments and the psychosocial dimensions of the SF-36, and that it is similar to the other MAU instruments in terms of its convergent and predictive validity. The second Australian survey demonstrated high test–retest reliability.ConclusionsThe results indicate that the AQoL-8D is a reliable and valid instrument which offers an alternative to the MAU instruments presently used in economic evaluation studies, and one which is particularly suitable when psychosocial elements of health are of importance.

Most research into emotional labour is focussed on front-line service staff and health professionals, in short-term interactions. Little exists exploring the emotional labour involved in repeated on-going interactions by educational leaders with key stakeholders. This study explored the relationships between emotional demands, three emotional labour facets, burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction in 1320 full-time school principals. Principals displayed significantly higher scores on emotional demands at work, burnout and job satisfaction, and significantly lower wellbeing scores than the general population. Structural equation modelling revealed that emotional demands predicted the elevated use of all emotional labour strategies. Surface Acting-Hiding emotions had an inverse relationship with burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction. Surface Acting-Faking emotions had an inverse relationship with job satisfaction. Deep Acting demonstrated no significant associations with outcome variables. The findings of this study extend the current literature on the effects of emotional labour. The study also extends understanding about the separate effects of the facets of emotional labour, which will aid in the development of interventions to reduce high levels of burnout reported by educational leaders.

Results indicate that instruments measure related but different constructs. They imply that commonly used instruments systematically discriminate against some classes of services, most notably mental health services. Differences in the instrument scales imply the need for transformations between the instruments to increase the comparability of measurement.

Post-stratification weights were used to ameliorate potential bias in the derivation of norms from web-based data for the AQoL-6D and AQoL-8D. The methods may be used generally to obtain norms when suitable auxiliary variables are available. The inclusion of an enlarged psycho-social component in the two instruments significantly alters the demographic profile.

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