Quality of Life and Health

This study focused on the issue of health care reform. One of the basic linchpins underlying reform is a focus on evidence-based medicine, that is, whether or not medical care improves the lives of individuals receiving care. In researchers' and health care organization administrators' search for how to measure this, they have focused on a series of psychometrically-valid instruments, for example in the SF-12 developed by John Ware and his colleagues at Rand. While measures such as these have been tested for validity and reliability, they appear to be insensitive to differences in social class and race/ethnic populations values and meanings. This SRP took one of the most widely used "quality of life" instruments in the arena of mental health, Anthony Lehman's QoL tool and examines the importance of each item for these different groups. 298 randomly selected adult Indianapolis residents (100 Caucasian, 99 African-Americans and 99 Hispanic-Americans) participated in in-person interviews.

This study was supported by funding from the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University-Bloomington.