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Abstract

The Quality of Life Scale (QOLS), created originally by American psychologist John Flanagan in the 1970's, has been adapted for use in chronic illness groups. This paper reviews the development and psychometric testing of the QOLS. A descriptive review of the published literature was undertaken and findings summarized in the frequently asked questions format. Reliability, content and construct validity testing has been performed on the QOLS and a number of translations have been made. The QOLS has low to moderate correlations with physical health status and disease measures. However, content validity analysis indicates that the instrument measures domains that diverse patient groups with chronic illness define as quality of life. The QOLS is a valid instrument for measuring quality of life across patient groups and cultures and is conceptually distinct from health status or other causal indicators of quality of life. Why assess Quality of Life in chronic illness?Quality of life (QOL) measures have become a vital and often required part of health outcomes appraisal. For populations with chronic disease, measurement of QOL provides a meaningful way to determine the impact of health care when cure is not possible. Over the past 20 years, hundreds of instruments have been developed that purport to measure QOL [1]. With few exceptions, these instruments measure what Fayers and colleagues [2,3] have called causal indicators of QOL rather than QOL itself. Health care professionals need to be clear about the conceptual definition of QOL and not to confound it with functional status, symptoms, disease processes, or treatment side-effects [4][5][6][7]. Although the definition of QOL is still evolving, Revicki and colleagues define QOL as "a broad range of human experiences related to one's overall well-being. It implies value based on subjective functioning in comparison with personal expectations and is defined by subjective experiences, states and perceptions. Quality of life, by its very natures, is idiosyncratic to the individual, but intuitively meaningful and understandable to most people [[8], p. 888]." This definition denotes a meaning for QOL that transcends health.

Measurement of community reintegration in sample of severely wounded servicemembers

“…We used four subscales of the SF-36V [23]. The Role Physical subscale uses 4-items that measure difficulty with role function in work or ADLs attributable to physical health problems [18,24].…”

“…The Quality of Life Scale (QOLS) consists of 16 questions that assess satisfaction with independent living and self-care activities [23].…”

The impact of tinnitus on adult Nigerians: health related Quality of Life assessment of sufferers using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the RAND-36 item health survey 1.0 questionnaire

“…It encompasses the impact of impairment on the psychological, psychosocial, emotional and health effects of an individual 2 . This definition is still evolving, however, HRQoL assessment has become an important and required part of healthcare evaluation providing a meaningful way for assessing healthcare outcomes 3,4 . Tinnitus, which is the auditory perception of sound in the absence of an external acoustic stimulus is a very distressing disease and is known to have multidirectional impacts on sufferers and unfavorably influencing their HRQoL and psychology 5 .…”

Escalas utilizadas para la medición de la calidad de vida en pacientes con enfermedad cerebrovascular

“…Estos dominios han sido los pilares para el desarrollo de escalas generales y específicas para evaluar la calidad de vida en pacientes. Se han realizado múltiples estudios para validar estos dominios y explorar nuevos, debido a la heterogeneidad del compromiso relacionado a la enfermedad cerebrovascular 9,10 . El uso de las escalas está sujeto a la disponibilidad en las instituciones de salud y a la validación que requieren para su aplicabilidad; la elección debe basarse en las propiedades psicométricas principalmente (tabla 2), ya que dichas propiedades son las que dan valor a los resultados que se obtengan con los pacientes [11][12][13] .…”