Implications for Decision-Making

Abstract

We now have in place a reasonably comprehensive picture of the nature and development of health status measurement. At the outset attempts were made to answer the question concerning why health status measurement has proceeded apace in recent years. This was followed by an historical outline of the developments in health status measurement, combined with a classification and description of the nature of some of the measures themselves. It was then stressed that there are certain key methodological requirements if health status measures are to be treated seriously in health measurement and evaluation: in particular such measures should be statistically ‘sound’, reliable and valid. Before considering the actual measurement processes appropriate to health status assessment a tour was taken around the issue of quality, and as we saw this turned out be a complex and indeed often elusive concept or set of concepts. Finally measurement was considered from first principles through to the controversies surrounding whose values should be used in health status measurement.