Measurement accuracy in assessing patient's quality of life: to weight or not to weight domains of quality of life.
OBJECTIVE
Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measures typically do not incorporate patients' preferences for domains such as physical, emotional, functional and social/family well-being, which may compromise precision.


METHODS
A forced-choice domain-preference measure was developed to assess the importance of HRQOL domains. About 194 cancer patients completed the domain-preference measure, along with measures of HRQOL, coping, adjustment, and life satisfaction.


RESULTS
Patients ranked emotional well-being as most important and the loss of social-family well-being as the most difficult to do without. A weighting algorithm revealed no advantage to incorporating individuals' domain preferences in HRQOL assessment; however, preliminary evidence suggested that HRQOL measurement may be more accurate in predicting outcomes for individuals with no distinct domain preferences than those with distinct preference profiles.


CONCLUSIONS
This study provides preliminary evidence for the validity of current measures of HRQOL, which may inherently take into account patients' domain preferences.
Philip
Errol J
EJ
Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. ephilip@nd.edu
Merluzzi
Thomas V
TV
Peterman
Amy
A
Cronk
Lisa B
LB
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007196:Indiana; D008297:Male; D008824:Michigan; D008875:Middle Aged; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards*; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results