Quality of life: methodological aspects.

The concept "Quality of Life" is a fairly popular concept in both the medical and lay press. However, from the literature it appears that it is operationalized in a diversity of ways and rarely a conceptual analysis of this term is given. In this paper a number of rules are given for the measurement of Quality of Life. A plea is made for a more thorough analysis of the research questions in oncology which pertain to quality of life and the role of quality of life outcome in medical decision making. It is mandatory that all involved in patient care specialists, general practitioners, nurses, social workers and psychologists should be involved in the design of quality of life studies in oncology.