title: Monitoring health outcomes among patients with arthritis using the SF-36 Health Survey: overview.
abstract: As shown here, general health measures cover much of the content included in arthritis-specific measures, but, are they equally sensitive to changes in disease condition? We reviewed the literature on the most widely used general health measure, the SF-36 Health Survey, to see if the empirical evidence supported its validity for use in arthritis patients. As of this writing, there was no documentation of the sensitivity of the SF-36 to short-term changes in arthritic condition over the course of clinical trials and few studies that compared the sensitivity of the SF-36 to arthritis-specific measures. The empirical research reported in this special supplement contributes to the literature on the use of the SF-36 in arthritis patients and demonstrates methods of studying the validity of general health measures to monitor change in specific conditions.
authors.affiliation: Health Assessment Lab, Health Institute, New England Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA. keller@rti.org
authors.forename: S D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: T C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Majkut
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kosinski
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Ware
mesh_terms: D001168:Arthritis / Q000628:therapy*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires