ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Our objective was to estimate preference-based weights for the IWQOL-Lite that reflect the relative importance overweight and obese people place on the domains included in the instrument. METHODS: US residents, 18 years of age or older, who are overweight (BMI=25.0-29.9) or obese (BMI>or=30) completed an online survey instrument consisting of 12 choice questions. The survey included eight attributes: problems doing usual daily activities, physical symptoms, worry about health, low self-esteem, sexual problems, problems moving around or sitting in public places, teasing or discrimination, and problems at work. Ordered probit was used to estimate importance weights for the attributes and levels. RESULTS: Five hundred and two subjects completed the survey. Sexual problem was the most important attribute. The remaining attributes can be ranked on the order of importance as follows: low self-esteem, physical symptoms, daily activities, teasing or discrimination, moving around or sitting, problems at work, and worry about health. CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm previous findings that weighting the individual items in the IWQOL-Lite by the importance of outcomes to overweight and obese subjects may provide a more meaningful evaluation of the effect of changes in weight on patient well-being than a nonpreference-based measure of HRQOL.
Subject(s)
Health Surveys , Obesity/psychology , Psychometrics , Quality of Life/psychology , Activities of Daily Living , Adaptation, Psychological , Body Mass Index , Female , Health Status , Health Status Indicators , Humans , Likelihood Functions , Logistic Models , Male , Middle Aged , Online Systems , Overweight/psychology , Stress, Psychological , United StatesABSTRACT
Prior studies have investigated the association between generic health-related quality of life and medication adherence. The objective of this study was to assess the association between medication adherence and health-related quality of life using both a disease-specific and generic metric in a community setting. Overall, the authors' study findings show no association between adherence and health-related quality of life, supporting the results by Cote and colleagues that factors other than medication adherence are important in explaining health-related quality of life. Furthermore, adherence was not significantly associated with asthma severity, although the strong association between asthma control and health-related quality of life, and asthma control and adherence indicates that asthma control is an important vital sign.
