Development, administration, scoring of the SF-36 Health Survey. Tests of scaling assumptions. Reliability, precision, and data quality. Validation strategies and interpretation guidelines. Validity : content-, criterion- and norm-based interpretation. Applications of the SF-36. Updates and future directions 2002-. SF-36 Forms.

Measuring Functioning and Well-Being is a comprehensive account a broad range of self-reported functioning and well-being measures developed for the Medical Outcomes Study, a large-sale study of how patients fare with health care in the United States. This book provides a set of ready-to-use generic measures that are applicable to all adults, including those well and chronically ill, as well as a methodological guide to collecting health data and constructing health measures. As demand increases for more practical methods to monitor the outcomes of health care, this volume offers a timely and valuable contribution to the field. The contributors address conceptual and methodological issues involved in measuring such important health status concepts as: physical, social, and role functioning; psychological distress and well-being; general health perceptions; energy and fatigue; sleep; and pain. The authors present psychometric results and explain how to administer, score, and interpret the measures. Comprising the work of a number of highly respected scholars in the field of health assessment, Measuring Functioning and Well-Being will be of great interest and value to the growing number of researchers, policymakers, and clinicians concerned with the management and evaluation of health care.

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.