There are, however, a number of questions about these health measurement tools that need to be addressed. For example, do these tools measure the same or different underlying dimensions of health in individuals? Do different measures of health work differently for sub-groups of the population ? The National Health Measurement Study has been designed to address these important questions. We are also collecting information on the Health and Activities Limitation Index (HALex), originally developed for use in the National Health Information Survey (NHIS), and refined for use in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey conducted by the CDC.

The key goals of this national study are: (1) to develop national "benchmarks" for average scores for each of these health measurement tools, across age, gender, racial, and socio-economic groups; (2) to explore how the results of individual health assessments may vary or be the same if we use different measurement tools; and (3) to better understand how health assessments relate to the presence of chronic conditions, psychological well-being, and socio-economic status.

Study Sample Characteristics
This project was a random-digit dial telephone survey of 3,844 community-living U.S. adults between the ages of 35 and 89 to collect information on health-related quality of life using measurement tools that are commonly used around the world: the SF-36, the EuroQol EQ-5D, the Quality of Well-being Scale (QWB-SA), the Health and Activity Limitation Index (HALex), and the Health Utilities Index (HUI2/3). The systematic survey oversampled both African-Americans and older adults in order to gather more information about these important subgroups. Analysts using our sampling weights can make nationally representative estimates for U.S. adults ages 35-89.

The NHMS study participants represent a diverse array of health states, chronic conditions, and personal characteristics. This rich dataset can be used to study both similarities and differences in self-reported health between various groups and a wide variety of common health conditions. Click on the "Study Sample Characteristics" title link to see descriptive statistics of our sample.

Information Collected for the NHMS Dataset
The study has created a rich dataset with information on several different topics key to health-related quality of life research. Participants answered items from widely used health-related quality of life indexes as well as provided information on possible health determinants in the areas of personal characteristics, socio-economic characteristics, and current chronic health conditions. Contextual data were obtained by linkage to the 2000 US Census. Persons over the age of 65 and African-Americans were over-sampled to provide a better understanding of how health measurement tools work for these important sub-groups. Click on the "Information Collected" title link to learn more.

Initial Results
NHMS researchers have performed some initial investigations of several different health-related quality of life topics with the information in our dataset. We are currently continuing to verify our findings. Click on the "Initial Results" title link to read about our specific projects.

The study was directed by researchers in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The survey was conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.