Abstract
Assessment of health-related quality of life is accelerating in naturalistic observational studies, clinical trials, and clinical practice. Some researchers have argued that the ability of a quality of life instrument to detect clinically important changes over time, “responsiveness”, is a distinct psychometric property from the measure's reliability and validity. We discuss the important implications of this argument and counter that responsiveness is actually one indication of a measure's validity.
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Preparation of this paper was supported in part by the World Health Organization (Regional Office for Europe) and by RAND. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the sponsor or RAND.
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Hays, R.D., Hadorn, D. Responsiveness to change: an aspect of validity, not a separate dimension. Qual Life Res 1, 73–75 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00435438
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00435438