FAQ
Copyright
The QOLHEQ may be used in daily clinical care for monitoring purpose without seeking permission. The use in academic studies which are not externally founded is also free. For any other use please send a request to Email.
How to get the QOLHEQ?
The PDF-version of the QOLHEQ can be downloaded in the download area of this website. If you need a Word-version to integrate the QOLHEQ in a questionnaire please send a request to Email.
How to analyze the QOLHEQ?
To calculate the QOLHEQ scores you can download a SPSS- and a SAS-syntax in the download area of this website. If you are using another statistic software you have to code the QOLHEQ as follows:
The following table shows the scoring for each QOLHEQ item, the item No. corresponds with the position of the item in the QOLHEQ. In general all items are scored 0-4 only 3 items differ in their scoring structure – they are marked with a *:
Item No. |
Scoring of the item |
symptoms | |
1 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
6 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
9 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
11 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
20 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
23 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
28* |
0 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 |
emotions | |
5 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
8 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
10* |
0 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 |
16 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
19 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
21 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
27 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
30 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
functioning | |
2 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
3 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
12 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
14 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
15 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
17 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
25 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
29 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
treatment and prevention | |
4* |
0 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 |
7 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
13 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
18 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
22 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
24 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
26 |
0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 |
If an item has a missing value it is coded with „0“ – after coding each item according to this rules you can calculate a sum-score for each subscale. If there are more than one missing value for the items of a subscale the sum-score for this subscale should not be calculate.
It is also possible to calculate a QOLHEQ-overall-score by summing up all items. In case of more than three missing values the overall-score should not be calculated.
Are there reference values for the QOLHEQ?
In the German validation study, where the disease severity assessed using the PGA (Physician Global Assessment; Range 1-5) was distributed approximately normally (Mean=2; SD=0.9) across the validation sample the following mean values for the subscales were found:
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The QOLHEQ was also assessed together with an anchor question assessing disease severity. The best agreement between this anchor question and the QOLHEQ-score (assessed using weighted kappa) is shown in the following table:
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