Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Dec;45(12):1162-70.
doi: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e31814848f1.

US norms for six generic health-related quality-of-life indexes from the National Health Measurement study

Dennis G Fryback  1 , Nancy Cross Dunham, Mari Palta, Janel Hanmer, Jennifer Buechner, Dasha Cherepanov, Shani A Herrington, Ron D Hays, Robert M Kaplan, Theodore G Ganiats, David Feeny, Paul Kind
Affiliations

US norms for six generic health-related quality-of-life indexes from the National Health Measurement study

Dennis G Fryback et al. Med Care. 2007 Dec.

Abstract

Background: A number of indexes measuring self-reported generic health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) using preference-weighted scoring are used widely in population surveys and clinical studies in the United States.

Objective: To obtain age-by-gender norms for older adults on 6 generic HRQoL indexes in a cross-sectional US population survey and compare age-related trends in HRQoL.

Methods: The EuroQol EQ-5D, Health Utilities Index Mark 2, Health Utilities Index Mark 3, SF-36v2 (used to compute SF-6D), Quality of Well-being Scale self-administered form, and Health and Activities Limitations index were administered via telephone interview to each respondent in a national survey sample of 3844 noninstitutionalized adults age 35-89. Persons age 65-89 and telephone exchanges with high percentages of African Americans were oversampled. Age-by-gender means were computed using sampling and poststratification weights to adjust results to the US adult population.

Results: The 6 indexes exhibit similar patterns of age-related HRQoL by gender; however, means differ significantly across indexes. Females report slightly lower HRQoL than do males across all age groups. HRQoL seems somewhat higher for persons age 65-74 compared with people in the next younger age decade, as measured by all indexes.

Conclusions: Six HRQoL measures show similar but not identical trends in population norms for older US adults. Results reported here provide reference values for 6 self-reported HRQoL indexes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Means estimating non-institutionalized US population health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) by age are shown for males and females using 6 standardized indexes: EQ-5D, HUI2, HUI3, QWB-SA, SF-6D, and HALex. Cases were stratified by age range and gender and means computed within each stratum using survey-weighted regression of index scores on age centered to ages 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 years as appropriate to the stratrum.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Patrick DL, Bush JW, Chen MM. Methods for measuring levels of well-being for a health status index. Health Serv Res. 1973;8:228–245. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ware JE, Jr., Brook RH, Davies AR, et al. Choosing measures of health status for individuals in general populations. Am J Public Health. 1981;71:620–5. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fryback DG, Dasbach EJ, Klein R, et al. The Beaver Dam Health Outcomes Study: initial catalog of health-state quality factors. Med Decis Making. 1993;13:89–102. - PubMed
    1. Gold MR. Cost-effectiveness in health and medicine. Oxford University Press; New York: 1996.
    1. Gold MR, Stevenson D, Fryback DG. HALYS AND QALYS AND DALYS, OH MY: Similarities and Differences in Summary Measures of Population Health. Annu Rev Public Health. 2002;23:115–34. - PubMed

Publication types