Measures of Health Related quality of life in an imperfect world: a comment on Dowie

Professor Dowie has written an interesting and thought provoking paper on a long lasting debate in the literature on measuring health related quality of life. The debate between generic and condition specific measures (CSMs) has not progressed a great deal with time and he is right to question a purely psychometric approach that currently tends to focuses on effect sizes. He has also presented an interesting challenge to the compromise solution suggested by a number of psychometricians to adopt both types of measure.