Response shift effects in the judgment of quality of life: an individualized approach using case vignettes

人们根据不断变化的条件调整自己对健康状况的评估。这对生活质量变化的检查有影响，因为评估标准不是一成不变的。这些参照系的变化称为响应位移。评估响应位移最常用的方法是测试方法。在这里，受试者被要求评估自己的实际健康状况，此外，他们还必须回忆过去的情况，并对回忆的情况做出判断。在反应转移的文献中，测试研究通常报告过去考试和回忆考试之间的比较，基于平均分数，研究参与者的平均分数。最近，一项自己的研究（Hinz et al., 2011）证明（通过超短仪器）对响应转移现象进行个性化分析是可能的，而且信息丰富。计划中的项目在三个维度上扩大了这项研究。首先，在超短问卷之外，使用经过验证的问卷。其次，该项目不仅包括前列腺癌患者，还包括其他疾病患者。第三，考试将包括小插曲的方法。使用这种技术，患者被要求评估他们自己的健康状况，此外，他们还评估被描述为短插曲的病例的健康状况。Korfage等人（2007）发表的一项研究似乎是迄今为止唯一一项在反应转移研究中使用这种小插曲技术的研究。将对自身健康状况的评估与归因于小插图的评估进行比较，以及它们的变化，将有助于深入了解参照系变化的机制。从这些方法中得出的假设将使用三种不同的患者样本（每个样本N=150）进行测试：泌尿系统癌症患者，乳腺癌幸存者和心血管康复计划的参与者。该项目的结果将对个别重新校准过程的机制和条件提供更深入的了解。

People adapt their assessments of their health situation to changing conditions. This has an impact on examinations of changes of quality of life, since the assessment criteria are not constant. Changes in these frames of reference are called response shift. The most often used method to assess response shift is the thentest method. Here the subjects are asked to evaluate their actual health state, and in addition they have to recall the situation in the past and to judge the recalled situation. In the response shift literature, the thentest studies generally report comparisons between past examinations and recalled examinations on the basis of mean scores, averaged across the participants of the study. Recently, an own study (Hinz et al., 2011) dem-onstrated (by means of ultra-short instruments) that individualized analyses of response shift phenomena are possible and informative. The planned project enlarges this study in three dimensions. Firstly, beyond the ultra-short questionnaires, validated questionnaires will be used. Secondly, the project will not only include patients suffering from prostate cancer, but also patients with other diseases. Thirdly, the examination will include the vignette approach. Using this technique, the patients are asked to evaluate their own health status, and in addition they evaluate the health status of cases that are described as short vignettes. A study published by Korfage et al. (2007) seems to be the only study that used this vignette technique in response shift research so far. The comparison between assessments of the own health state and the assessments attributed to the vignettes, together with their changes, will provide insight in the mechanisms of changes of frames of reference. The hypotheses derived from these approaches will be tested using three different samples of patients (N=150 each): urologic cancer patients, breast cancer survivors, and participants of a cardiovascular rehabilitation program. The results of the project will provide a deeper insight in the mechanisms and conditions of individual recalibration processes.