Sarah Boslaugh, PhD¹, Elena M Andresen, PhD², Angela Recktenwald, MS³, and Kathleen Gillespie, PhD³. (1) Health Communications Research Laboratory, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Ave, 4th floor, St. Louis, MO 63104, 314-977-4098, boslaugh@slu.edu, (2) Department of Community Health, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, 3663 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63108, (3) School of Public Health, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Ave, St. Louis, MO 63104

One of the instruments used to measure health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Healthy People 2010 is the Health and Activity Limitation Index (HALex). The HALex is a relatively new scale which estimates utilities using a formula which combines scores from two components, one measuring general health and one for disability and role functions. Very little is known about how HALex scores compare to scores on other measures of HRQoL and utilities. Our study is the first to compare scores on the HALex to scores on the Quality of Well Being scale (QWB), the ‘gold standard’ for measuring health utilities. We conducted random-digit-dialed telephone interviews with 302 adults in St. Louis, MO and collected information sufficient to classify them on the HALex and Quality of Well Being scale (QWB) as well as demographic and health information. We found that HALex and QWB scores were similar for people with medium utilities but that HALex scores were more extreme for people high or low utilities compared to the QWB. To examine influences on HALex scores, we ran a regression equation entering variables in three blocks: 1) QWB score, 2) ethnicity, employment status and age and 3) self-described disability status and number of chronic diseases. The first model explained 22.2% of the variance, the second an additional 8.4% and the third an additional 18.5%. Coefficients in the final model indicate that, relative to QWB scores, HALex scores are significantly lower for persons with self-described disabilities and chronic diseases, and significantly higher for Caucasians.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to

• Describe how disability is measured by the HALex and QWB
• Describe some variables which explain the discrepancies between HALex and QWB scores for individuals

Keywords: Disability, Statistics

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.