The Time Distribution Method for Measuring Clinically Valid Quality of Life State

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad objective of this application is to improve measurement of quality of life in the behavioral and health sciences by developing a novel assessment method and demonstrating its feasibility in patients who have had hematopoietic stem cell transplants. The new approach asks the patient to use a highly intuitive interface [VIsual Time Analog (VITA)] to partition the day into mutually exclusive, clinically valid, states of quality of life. The partitions provided by the patients generate ordered categorical response states that have very desirable psychometric and statistical properties, and which will be suitable for individual clinical monitoring as well as trial endpoints. This R21 second resubmission responds to PA-06-351 (Exploratory Grants for Behavioral Research in Cancer Control [R21]), following the expiration of PA-06-343. Focus groups will be conducted to obtain patient evaluations of the ease of use and the meaningfulness of the VITA measurement device. In addition, we will obtain feedback from clinicians regarding the clinical meaningfulness of data obtained with the new device. A data collection study will be conducted with 60 patients who will use the VITA format to rate eight areas of well-being through a website program. Both brief daily and longer monthly assessments will occur over a three-month period from the patient's home. We hypothesize that the new research will lead to more valid and sensitive measurement of patient QOL. We believe that the proposed assessment method will be more intuitively acceptable to patients. Clinicians will value the improved portrayal of how individuals differ, how they change over time, and the increased ability to predict important clinical events from these more sensitive QOL measures. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Quality of life (QOL) changes by the week, the day, and the hour; how these moments affect us becomes our QOL. In medical research, we use standardized questionnaires that usually try to summarize these changing states and feelings over a long period. This project offers a new method for capturing this important variation by asking patients to indicate the proportion of time during a day (or other period) they experience different levels of well-being.