title: Measuring and valuing health benefits for economic evaluation in adolescence: an assessment of the practicality and validity of the child health utility 9D in the Australian adolescent population.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Child Health Utility 9D (CHU9D) is a new generic preference-based measure of health-related quality of life developed for children aged 7 to 11 years. There is increasing interest in its potential for application in adolescents, and previous research has demonstrated that it shows good construct validity here. This article further examines its practicality and validity in adolescents by comparing it with KIDSCREEN-10, a short generic measure for assessing children and adolescents' health-related quality of life and well-being.
  
  
  METHODS
  A Web-based survey, including the CHU9D, a general health question, questions on the presence of long-standing illness, disability, or medical conditions, sociodemographic variables, and KIDSCREEN-10, was administered to 961 consenting adolescents. The practicality and face and construct validity of the CHU9D were examined, and the CHU9D and KIDSCREEN-10 were compared in terms of their coverage, correlations between dimensions, and overall scores.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Both measures demonstrated good practicality and validity. The strongest degree of correlation was found with the only dimension in common for the CHU9D and KIDSCREEN (sad). The lowest correlations were found between all the CHU9D dimensions and the "have you had enough time for yourself" dimension of KIDSCREEN-10.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings from this study provide further support for the practicality and validity of the application of the CHU9D in the economic evaluation of adolescent health care and public health programs. Further research to test the psychometric performance of the CHU9D in more diverse clinical samples of adolescents is desirable including tests of reliability.
authors.affiliation: Health Economics and Decision Science, School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. K.Stevens@Sheffield.ac.uk
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Stevens
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ratcliffe
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000453:epidemiology; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires