Background

Sheffield University wanted to develop a broad measure of quality of life for use in economic evaluations across health and social care (no such metric existed at the time). It was important that the new instrument would be able to capture the benefits of interventions as well as incorporating aspects of life that are important to care recipients and carers.

Approach

Given the wide diversity of participants, a mixed methodology approach was needed – combining paper questionnaires with an online survey. The resulting logistics were very challenging, but we were able to reach 1200 respondents online and 600 through the postal approach.

Results

Due to the success of this approach, we have now been asked to extend the survey internationally to China, Argentina, Germany, Australia and the USA. In each case, countries will create their own unique online instrument to measure quality of life, although they will be using the core questionnaire created in the UK.