Assessing the performance of a new generic measure of health related quality of life for children and refining it for use in health state valuation

Purpose: The aims of this research were to pilot and assess the performance of a new generic paediatric health related quality of life measure and to refine the measure to be amenable to health state valuation to make it suitable for use in economic evaluation.

Methods: A sample of 247 children was recruited from general and clinical paediatric populations. Each child completed the measure and data was collected to allow assessment of practicality, validity, whether the child could self complete and preferences for alternative wordings that could be used. The measure was refined in light of the results and also to make it amenable to health state valuation.

Results: The measure demonstrated good practicality and validity in both the general and clinical paediatric populations with excellent completion rates, a low time to complete and evidence of face, content and construct validity. To make it suitable for health state valuation, the number of dimensions of health related quality of life was reduced from 11 to 9.

Conclusions: The measure performed well and the final measure generates health states which should be feasible for valuation. Further research is needed to value the final descriptive system.