Validation and calibration of the SF-36 health transition question in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey
Key objective:
To quantify the change in health status for the categories of the SF-36 health transition question in clinical terms
Cross-sectional population surveys depend on retrospective self-report if they are to estimate changes in health status over time. An example is the health transition question (HTQ) from the SF-36 health survey that ask the respondent rate his/her health compared to one year ago. However little has been done to estimate the clinical magnitude of change in health related to responses to health transition questions.
Calibrating the response categories of the HTQ against an external measure of known clinical change will help in interpreting the clinical meaning of the HTQ categories and increase its usefulness as a stand alone item in cross-sectional surveys.
We are using the HILDA study to obtain some estimates of the size of prospective change in health status on the SF-36 scales for the HTQ and comparing this against the size of prospective change for respondents who have recently developed a new long-term health condition.
CHERE Working paper 2007/15 has been produced.
Results were presented at the International Society for Quality of Life (ISOQOL) conference Montevideo 2008
Published article:
Knox SA, King MT. Validation and calibration of the SF-36 health transition question against an external criterion of clinical change in health status. Qual Life Res 2009;18(5):637-45.
Funding source
NH&MRC Program Grant
CHERE staff
Stephanie Knox
Collaborator
Madeleine King1
1. University of Sydney
