This book offers a comprehensive guide to measures of health and is an essential reference resource for all health professionals and students.

Questions concerning the notion of quality of life, its definition, and its ap plications for purposes of assessment and measurement in social and medical contexts, have been widely discussed in Scandinavia during the last ten years. To a great extent this discussion mirrors the international develop ment in the area. Several methods for the assessment and measurement of quality of life have been borrowed from the UK and the US and then further developed in northern Europe. But there has also been an internal develop ment. This holds in particular for the social arena, where Scandinavia has had a special tradition both in theory and practice. In this volume an attempt is made to illustrate some aspects of the philo sophical, and in general theoretical, discussion concerning quality of life in Scandinavia. In addition, some prominent scholars from other parts of Europe, i. e. , France, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy, have been invited to contribute. The volume is divided into three sections. The first contains philosophical analyses of the general notion of quality of life and proposes a number of different explications. The second section considers various ap plications of the notion of quality of life in health care. The papers serve to disentangle some intellectual and ethical problems that stem from these ap plications. The third section is more practical and focuses on methods of measuring quality of life in medicine and health care.

A 'how-to' or 'cookbook' style book, setting out why patient-based measures are important, their history, and how to develop and select quality of life and related measures to assess outcomes in the health care workplace. For those interested in a more in-depth understanding of the area, or whose curiosity has been piqued, there would also be brief sections in each chapter that provide a more detailed examination of relevant theoretical or technical issues.

The rubric "Quality of Life" first came to the explicit attention of the medical profession a little over thirty years ago. Despite the undoubted fact that each one of us has his or her own Quality of Life, be it good or bad, there is still no general agreement about its definition, or the manner in which it should be evaluated. Although much has been written about quality of life, this work has been largely concerned with population-based studies, especially in health policy & health economics. The importance of individual quality of life has been neglected, in part because of a failure to define quality of life itself with sufficient care, in part perhaps because of a belief that it is impossible to develop a meaningful method of measuring individual variables. It is a fundamental belief of the editors of this book that the primary focus of quality of life is & must continue to be the individual, who alone can define it & assess its changing personal significances. The individual perspective is of vital importance not only to patients but to their doctors too, & is more & more frequently proposed as the most meaningful measure of outcome in clinical research, especially in non-remitting or chronic conditions. Workers who wish to consider wider aspects of influences on the illnesses suffered by individuals & the health care that they receive will find much to stimulate them in the methods of documentation proposed in this book. Those mainly concerned with population samples rather than individuals may also find the sensitive methods of investigation proposed here not only to be applicable to their own areas of interest, but also rewarding in perhaps unexpected ways.

This volume's purpose is to describe concepts and methods concerning assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and adolescents with a special focus on chronic health conditions. The impetus for this book came from a recognition of the increasing importance of HRQOL assessments in the evaluation of treatment outcomes and the need to increase the utilization of HRQOL assessments in research and clinical applications with a range of pediatric populations. The need to develop a volume that describes new research and clinical applications concerning this topic stemmed from several recent developments. There is a continuing need for evaluations of the efficacy of medical treatments for children and adolescents, including those with chronic health conditions. To address these critical unmet needs in the field of HRQOL assessment, and to advance scientific methods and clinical applications in this field, a conference was held at Case Western Reserve University. The conference set out to summarize current information concerning the development and implementation of measures of HRQOL assessment, to identify and consider key conceptual and methodological issues in research concerning the measurement of HRQOL, and to recommend priorities to advance the state-of-the-art in research and clinical applications of QOL assessment in children and adolescents with chronic health conditions. This volume summarizes and synthesizes the information that was presented by the conference participants in a series of lively discussions and chapters that were based on the presentations.

The volume presents a broad spectrum of papers which illustrates a range of current research related to the theory, methods and applications of health related quality of life (HRQoL) as well as the interdisciplinary nature of this work.

The concept of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has evolved since the 1980s, with broad-based applications for clinical care, research, and health policy, as well as for individual and patient use. This book, Health-Related Quality of Life - Measurement Tools, Predictors and Modifiers, highlights measurement tools for HRQoL, as well as predictors and modifiers, examining HRQoL in various disease states, including psychological health. It also discusses ethical issues in the use of HRQoL measurements. The book is a compendium of original research, sharing perspectives from across developing and developed world settings. It is a useful text for researchers and students of academic disciplines in public health and clinical studies, extending to healthcare administrators and policymakers.

Worldwide economic constraints on health care systems have highlighted the importance of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based health policy. The resulting clinical trials and health services research studies require instruments to monitor the outcomes of care and the output of the health system. However, the over-abundance of competing measurement scales can make choosing a measure difficult at best. Measuring Health provides in-depth reviews of over 100 of the leading health measurement tools and serves as a guide for choosing among them.LNow in its third edition, this book provides a critical overview of the field of health measurement, with a technical introduction and discussion of the history and future directions for the field. This latest edition updates the information on each of the measures previously reviewed, and includes a complete new chapter on anxiety measurement to accompany the one on depression. It has also added new instruments to those previously reviewed in each of the chapters in the book.LChapters cover measurements of physical disability, social health, psychological well-being, anxiety, depression, mental status testing, pain, general health status and quality of life. Each chapter presents a tabular comparison of the quality of the instruments reviewed, followed by a detailed description of each method, covering its purpose and conceptual basis, its reliability and validity and, where possible, shows a copy of the actual scale. To ensure accuracy of the information, each review has been approved by the original author of each instrument or by an acknowledged expert.