Home  Publications 20 Years Special Edition IS QoL a COA? |
|
|
Page 1 of 8 Keywords: Patient-Reported Outcomes, Item Response Theory, Computer Adaptive Testing, SF-36, IQOLA
Some Background
The first article of the MAPI Research Trust’s Quality-of-Life Newsletter (MAPI QoL-NL), twenty years ago, argued for close study of the cognitive processes involved in evaluating QoL.1 QoL was a major subject of interest for MAPI and other institutions. having by then become firmly established within the rapidly increasing field of Health Sciences (HS, of which
Medicine itself was clearly the most important).
QoL as a process has always received even less attention than it has as a state. It is not an easy area for study, and the difficulties of both aspects have probably encouraged the movement away from enquiries into “true” QoL. This was reflected in autumn 2004 by a change in name of the newsletter, which became the Patient-Reported Outcomes Newsletter (MAPI PRO-NL).2 Interest in the definition of QoL and development of methods for its study have continued to stagnate since the change of title. The overwhelming majority still rely on the questionnaire format, often paying obsessive attention to semantic detail in order to facilitate their use in ever larger clinical trials.
The most outstanding example of a study of healthy subjects on a nationwide epidemiological scale was proposed in 1972 by the King and subsequently executed in the Kingdom of Bhutan. In this happy country, the measurement of Gross National Happiness substitutes for the calculation of Gross Domestic Product made by most national authorities. The current British Prime Minister rather belatedly proposed something of the kind in 2006 and has been assisted in his ambition by the London School of Economics at a cost of £2,000,000 per year.3 (Recent events may have dampened British enthusiasm for the project; Canada and France appear currently to be making greater progress in this direction.) Large-scale applications such as these surely require more basic attention to the improvement of their methodology than do even the largest of clinical trials.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next > End >>
|
|
