BMJ 2002;325:599 ( 14 September )

Letters

Recommendations from quality of life scales are not simple

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---As someone who is guilty of adding to the large number of disease specific quality of life (QOL) scales, let me add a note of caution to the pleas made by Garratt et al for guidance and recommendations for the users of these scales---however understandable that plea is.1 QOL scales are not like thermometers or spirometers, where the reading is independent of the type of patient.

A QOL scale is just a shopping bag of experiences (or questions) that are put together to form a scale, rather like the retail price index. The retail price index is a shopping bag of goods for an "average" shopper, even though most people are not that average shopper. The scale value obtained from a QOL scale depends on the overlap between the items in a scale and the patient's own experience of disease. So, for example, if there is a . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Quality of life measurement: bibliographic study of patient assessed health outcome measures
Andrew Garratt, Louise Schmidt, Anne Mackintosh, and Ray Fitzpatrick
BMJ 2002 324: 1417. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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