ISOQOL 19th Annual Conference

October 24-27, 2012 | Budapest, Hungary

Dr. Ware presented a paper entitled “Evaluation of a More Comprehensive Survey Item Bank for Standardizing Disease-Specific Impact Comparisons across Chronic Conditions”, at the ISOQOL Annual Conference. The paper presented a new Quality of Life Disease Impact Scale (QDIS^®) developed by JWRG to fill the gap between widely-used disease-specific and generic patient-reported outcomes (PRO) measures. Preliminary evaluations of QDIS psychometric properties and empirical validity were reported. QDIS metrics standardized across conditions were shown to be sound psychometrically and valid. Combined with norm-based scoring and an integrated “dashboard” display, QDIS allows for easier interpretation of both disease-specific and generic health outcome measures. Tests of the usefulness of such combined information in clinical research and practice are warranted. In addition, Dr. Ware’s afternoon workshop at ISOQOL addressed “Integrating and Improving Generic and Disease-Specific Assessments.” Objectives included showing how both the content and scoring of disease-specific QOL impact measures can be standardized, how to evaluate improvements in QOL impact survey efficiency, and how reduced respondent burden can be achieved without sacrificing reliability and validity.