The quality of life scale (QOLS): reliability, validity, and utilization
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The Quality of Life Scale (QOLS), created originally by American psychologist John Flanagan in the 1970's, has been adapted for use in chronic illness groups. This paper reviews the development and psychometric testing of the QOLS. A descriptive review of the published literature was undertaken and findings summarized in the frequently asked questions format. Reliability, content and construct validity testing has been performed on the QOLS and a number of translations have been made. The QOLS has low to moderate correlations with physical health status and disease measures. However, content validity analysis indicates that the instrument measures domains that diverse patient groups with chronic illness define as quality of life. The QOLS is a valid instrument for measuring quality of life across patient groups and cultures and is conceptually distinct from health status or other causal indicators of quality of life.
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The average total score on the QOLS for healthy populations is approximately 90.
“Scores range from 16 to 112 and the average total score for healthy populations (i.e., without psychiatric or medical diagnoses) is approximately 90 (Burckhardt and Anderson, 2003).”
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- Authors
- Burckhardt
- Venue
- Health and Quality of Life Outcomes
- Published
- 2003
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 60
- ISSN
- 1477-7525 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC269997
- OpenAlex
- W2103654910
- Cited by
- 789
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 44 · 2025: 74 · 2024: 72 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 61 · 2021: 65 · 2020: 47 · 2019: 50 · 2018: 46 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 40 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 20
- FWCI
- 1.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- Locations
- Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
- Social Sciences › Education › Health Education and Validation
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- quality of life scale, quality of life assessment, chronic disease, psychometric properties, reliability statistics, content validity, construct validity, cross-cultural adaptation, health status, patient-reported outcomes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Chronic Disease, Female, Health Status, Humans, Male, Psychometrics, Quality of Life, Surveys and Questionnaires, Sex Factors, Reproducibility of Results, Sickness Impact Profile, Validation Studies as Topic
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