Validity of the Quality of Well-Being Scale for Persons With Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

Abstract

To evaluate the validity of the Quality of Well-Being Scale (QWB) for studies of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease, 514 men were studied who were divided among four categories: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Group A (N = 272), CDC-B (N = 81), CDC-C (N = 47), and uninfected male controls (N = 114). The QWB and a variety of medical, neuropsychological, and biochemical measures were administered to all participants. When QWB scores were broken down by HIV group, the CDC-C group was significantly lower (.614) than the CDC-B (.679), CDC-A (.754), or control group (.801). The difference between Groups CDC-C and CDC-A was about .14 units of well-being, which suggests that individuals lose 1/7 equivalents of 1 well year of life for each year they are in Group CDC-C in comparison to the asymptomatic group (Group CDC-A). In comparison to the controls, this would equal a 1-year of life loss for each seven infected individuals. The QWB was shown to be significantly associated with CD4+ lymphocytes (p < .001), clinician ratings of neuropsychological impairment (p < .04), neurologists ratings of dysfunction (p < .001), and all subscales of the Profile of Mood States. Baseline QWB scores were significant prospective predictors of death over a median follow-up time of 30 months. Multivariate models demonstrated high covariation between predictors of QWB. It was concluded that the QWB is a significant correlate of biological, neuropsychological, neurological, psychiatric, and mortality outcomes for male HIV-infected patients.

Glycemia and the Quality of Well-Being in Patients with Diabetes

“…The QWB-SA was developed in 1996 as a selfadministered, scanable version of the Quality of Wellbeing Index (QWB), a previously validated measure of preference-based general health status [7,8] that has been used in populations with a variety of diseases [1,9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The QWB-SA assesses symptoms (acute and chronic) and functioning (self-care, mobility, physical activity, and social activity) to provide a health-utility score as a summary measure of QoL [9,10].…”

Multidimensional health status of HIV-infected outpatients at a tertiary care center in north India

“…Some examples are multiple versions of Medical Outcome Study (MOS). [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] We have used The World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF [16,17] for measuring quality of life in 68 HIV patients in the same setup. [18] It provides scores on a scale of 0 to 100, which is often useful for assessing the outcome of a therapy in patients on followup.…”

Quality of Well-being Outcomes in the National Emphysema Treatment Trial

“…21 Further, the method has been used for health resource allocation modeling and has served as the basis for an innovative experiment on rationing of health care by the state of Oregon. 22,23 Studies have also demonstrated that the QWB is responsive to clinical change derived from surgery 14 or medical conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, 24 AIDS, 10 and cystic fibrosis. 11 Th e QWB was developed more recently.…”