Methods for measuring levels of well-being for a health status index

Abstract

Three psychological scaling procedures—category rating, magnitude estimation, and equivalence—were used to measure the levels of well-being that student and health-leader judges in 14 experimental groups associate with 50 case descriptions of function status representing the continuum from complete well-being to death. No significant differences were detected for order of method presentation, interview situation, scaling method, student vs. leader judges, or most interactions among these factors. Category rating, the simplest and apparently the most reliable of the methods, was consistent with the results of the social choices implied in the equivalence technique. The results indicate the feasibility of measuring the social values of large numbers of cases in household interview surveys.