Comparison and concordance of health-related quality of life tests among substance users

Antonio J. Rojas, Oscar Lozano, Katia Foresti, Elham Zolfaghari, Carlos Zubaran

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    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Background: In the field of drug and alcohol abuse, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has been used as an important clinical and research outcome. The aim of this study was to establish score linkages (concordance) among three HRQoL assessment tools: WHOQOL-BREF, DUQOL and HRQOLDA scores, applying a Rasch-based common person equating procedure. Methods: One hundred and twenty one adults were recruited from inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities in Sydney West Area Health Service. WHOQOL-BREF, DUQOL and HRQOLDA tests were administered. Item parameters were calculated applying Rating Scale Model, a Rasch model. Results: Fit statistics suggest acceptable goodness-of-fit to the RSM for three instruments. Correlations between HRQOLDA and WHOQOL-BREF and between HRQOLDA and DUQOL scores were 0.719 and 0.613, and the RiU index was 30.4 % and 20.9 %, respectively. All three tests performed adequately for differentiating between individuals whose scores are located at different points along the continuum of the HRQoL construct. Conclusion: The results demonstrated a higher concordance between the HRQoLDA and WHOQOL-BREF than between the HRQoLDA and the DUQOL. However, it cannot be established unequivocally that the scores of these tools are concordant. In this study, the utility of the application of the Rasch model to provide an empirical benchmark for the selection of measurement tools to be used in the context of health care and research is demonstrated.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number186
    Number of pages11
    JournalHealth and Quality of Life Outcomes
    Volume13
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Open Access - Access Right Statement

    © 2015 Rojas et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

    Keywords

    • Rasch models
    • drug addiction
    • health
    • quality of life

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