US norms for six generic health-related quality-of-life indexes from the National Health Measurement study.

BACKGROUND

A number of indexes measuring self-reported generic health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) using preference-weighted scoring are used widely in population surveys and clinical studies in the United States.

OBJECTIVE

To obtain age-by-gender norms for older adults on 6 generic HRQoL indexes in a cross-sectional US population survey and compare age-related trends in HRQoL.

METHODS

The EuroQol EQ-5D, Health Utilities Index Mark 2, Health Utilities Index Mark 3, SF-36v2 (used to compute SF-6D), Quality of Well-being Scale self-administered form, and Health and Activities Limitations index were administered via telephone interview to each respondent in a national survey sample of 3844 noninstitutionalized adults age 35-89. Persons age 65-89 and telephone exchanges with high percentages of African Americans were oversampled. Age-by-gender means were computed using sampling and poststratification weights to adjust results to the US adult population.

RESULTS

The 6 indexes exhibit similar patterns of age-related HRQoL by gender; however, means differ significantly across indexes. Females report slightly lower HRQoL than do males across all age groups. HRQoL seems somewhat higher for persons age 65-74 compared with people in the next younger age decade, as measured by all indexes.

CONCLUSIONS

Six HRQoL measures show similar but not identical trends in population norms for older US adults. Results reported here provide reference values for 6 self-reported HRQoL indexes.