Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important measure of the well-being of a person or group and is increasingly recognized as a valid marker of service need and health outcomes. Given the increasing morbidity associated with chronic disease that is occurring globally, there is significant interest among clinicians and public health professionals to understand how HRQoL changes over the disease course, and investigate the ways in which disease and disability affect HRQoL. Unfortunately, the analysis and interpretation of HRQoL is not straightforward. HRQoL is a multidimensional construct that encompasses physical, social, functional, and mental health; not all of the domains are equally responsive to changes in the disease state or level of impairment. Moreover in longitudinal studies, problems of missing data, subject loss, and outliers can invalidate results obtained using conventional methods of analysis. This research will develop and investigate statistical procedures to analyze multidimensional, longitudinal HRQoL data. It will focus specifically on procedures that can be used to discriminate between individuals or groups with different disease characteristics or health outcomes over time on multiple HRQoL domains. These longitudinal discriminant analysis procedures will be studied using computer simulation techniques and real-life data from a population-based longitudinal cohort study of individuals with inflammatory bowel disease. The overall goal of the research is to find the most appropriate procedure(s) for analyzing HRQoL data, to benefit health researchers and applied statisticians. The knowledge gained from studies of HRQoL is important for planning treatments and interventions that will have a positive impact on an individual's or group's health.