This Note (1) presents the self-administered health status and attitudinal batteries that RAND's Health Insurance Experiment assessed on adults and (2) documents their scoring rules. It is intended for those who plan to use or adapt these measures for their own research. Each chapter discusses a particular set of measures: physical and role functioning, mental health, social resources and contacts, general health perceptions, serious and minor symptoms, medical care satisfaction, and dental care satisfaction. Also discussed are frequency distributions and the handling of missing data.

The fifth volume in a series reviewing published literature and documenting conceptualization and construction of health status measures used in the Health Insurance Study (HIS). Analyses reported are based on non-HIS sources; plans for analyzing HIS data from the Health Perceptions Questionnaire (HPQ) are documented. The HPQ contains six summated ratings scales reflecting perceptions of current, past, and future health, resistance-susceptibility, sickness orientation, and health worry/concern. These measures appear sufficiently reliable and valid for testing hypotheses on effects of differences in coinsurance and deductibles and fee-for-service compared with group practice and of differences in use of medical care services on health status in general populations.

Describes the development of a Dental Satisfaction Questionnaire (DSQ) for use in the Health Insurance Experiment (HIE) and evaluates, against standard psychometric criteria, how well the DSQ met the goals outlined for its development and usefulness to the HIE. Scaling analyses resulted in construction of nine dental satisfaction measures: Access, Availability/Convenience, Cost, Pain Management, Quality, Continuity, General Satisfaction, Access Total, and an overall Dental Satisfaction Index. Results support scale reliability and validity, and use of the DSQ in general population studies that tap patients' opinions about dental care. The report provides scale scoring rules, and suggests areas for further research on the dental satisfaction concept and on the distinction between dental and medical satisfaction.

This paper reviews ongoing developments in measurement of the quality of medical care and efforts to assure the quality of medical care services in the United States. It recommends several topics in need of continued research to solve methods problems in measurement of the quality of care. The paper also proposes the outlines of a quality assurance system for the 1980s and beyond.