Assessing quality of life in the eating disorders: the HeRQoLED-S.
EVALUATION OF: Las Hayas C, Quintana JM, Padierna JA, Bilbao A, Muñoz P. Use of Rasch methodology to develop a short version of the Health Related Quality of Life for Eating Disorders questionnaire: a prospective study. Health Qual. Life Outcomes 8, 29 (2010). Quality of life has become of increasing interest for health professionals since the 1980s and is now incorporated into assessment, treatment and evaluation of many health interventions. Within the arena of eating disorders, adequate consideration of quality of life within treatment and research has been slower, but is now coming into line with wider physical and mental health fields. A number of eating disorder-specific measures have been developed that aim to assess perceived quality of life while also minimizing response bias, which can be attributable to the ego-syntonicity of the eating disorders. While these measures are of great importance, further work is still required to assess the reliability and validity of these scales and to adapt the current available measures to increase their suitability for incorporation into clinical and research protocols. The current discussed paper by Las Hayas et al. aims to evaluate the Health Related Quality of Life for the Eating Disorders - version 2 (HeRQoLEDv2) for reliability and validity, to develop a short form of this questionnaire, the Health Related Quality of Life for the Eating disorders - Short form (HeRQoLED-S) using Rasch methodology and to further assess the HeRQoLED-S for reliability and validity. The authors confirm their hypothesized internal structure of the scales and present evidence for the reliability of the short scale. However, the short measure should be subject to more rigorous analysis of its reliability and construct validity in order to provide evidence as to its relationship to quality of life as perceived by eating disorder individuals.
South-West London and St. Georges Mental Health Trust, Department of Mental Health, St Georges University of London, London SW17 0RE, UK. bbamford@sgul.ac.uk
Bryony H
BH
Bamford