Measurement Issues in Quality-of-Life Assessments

Abstract

QOL assessments may be used as part of data collection to address a specific research question or may be used to guide clinical practice. Research findings used to guide clinical practice should be evaluated for validity, reliability, and fit of the sample before being incorporated into clinical practice. QOL assessment in clinical practice may be used as an exploratory tool to identify potential problems or may be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a targeted intervention.

Measurement accuracy in assessing patient’s quality of life: to weight or not to weight domains of quality of life

“…Numerous measures have been developed to assess patients' HRQOL [4,[10][11][12], including those specifically for cancer treatment and research [3,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. For example, a number of individualized measures, such as the Patient-Generated Index [18] and the SEiQOL [19], do enable individuals to identify preferred domains; however, these measures are not widely used in clinical trials or the evaluation of treatment outcomes.…”

Quality of Life among Chronic Disease Patients

“…Varrcchio has noted that most of these systems were made with very particular purposes in mind and may not serve any different purpose. 64 Psychometric properties are also rarely considered during an HRQOL system's conception. 60 The reason for neglecting psychometric properties is the length of time it requires and the meticulous testing needed to prove psychometric quality.…”

Development and validation of a scale to measure health-related socioeconomic well-being in persons with a cancer diagnosis.

“…Researchers generally use QOL measures to report group data and compare it with normative data from previous studies while clinicians are interested in the benefit or effect on an individual and use the information for individual clinical decision making (Varricchio, 2006). For a measure to be clinically useful, it must be reliable appropriate, valid, responsive and also simple, quick to complete, easy to score and reflective of useful clinical information ).…”

“…Psychological adaptation, referred to as "response shift," occurs in cancer patients and others living with chronic disease (Muldoon, Barger, Flory, & Manuck, 1998). Response shift is the change in scores over time as respondents change expectations as they adjust to illness; often this can contribute to difficulties in interpreting data (Varricchio, 2006). Therefore, questions related to wellbeing can elicit different answers over time regardless of disease progression or functional decline.…”

“…Conceptual fit, the degree to which the measure evaluates the concepts or variables of interest to the researcher or clinician, should be of primary importance (Varricchio, 2006). The content of the instrument should be appropriate to the population of interest (Donnelly, 2000).…”