Grant: Project Grant

This study addresses a measurement gap related to assessing those aspects of health that matter to the quality of life of older persons, termed health-related quality of life (HRQL). Measures exist for assessing the HRQL impact of illnesses and conditions but these measures are not best suited for older persons who may have many such illnesses and conditions but who are still interested and involved in aging actively. Some of the existing measures use many items to assess all the different illness aspects; others use very few items and capture only an illness snapshot. Often the items are not relevant to the experience of older persons and some of the items ask the same content in different ways, something that many find confusing, if not annoying. The intent here is to develop a brief measure of what matters to older persons as they attempt to get on with their life despite an illness burden. This study will also use modern statistical and measurement approaches to create a scoring method that produces a value that considers the preferences for different combinations of health circumstances from the perspective of the older person: "If I had to have that (pain) then I would also rather have this (many interesting distractions)". The gathering of evidence to support the interpretation of the scores across different groups of people (validation) will also be conducted through this project using a mix of in-person assessments and anonymous surveys using the internet. The methods proposed are consistent with the most up-to-date and rigorous guidelines for developing and testing measures and will result in a measure that can be used to evaluate seniors in their own communities.