The Quality of Well-Being Scale: Comparison of the interviewer-administered version with a self-administered questionnaire

The Quality of Well-being Scale (QWB) is a general measure of health-related quality of life that has been used in a wide variety of population and clinical studies. One of the major disadvantages of the QWB is that it requires a trained interviewer. Recently, a self-administered version of the QWB was developed. The purpose of this study was to compare the self-administered QWB with the established interviewer-administered form. The respondents were 218 English speaking adults who attended primary care clinics. Each respondent was evaluated twice with an interval of one month in-between. At each session respondents were randomly assigned to complete either the interviewer-administered or self-administered QWB, resulting in a 2 x 2 factorial design. Data from the study demonstrated that the self-administered QWB yields scores equivalent to the interviewer-administered form. Further, QWB scores remain stable over the course of a one month interval. The results suggest that an inexpensive self-administered QWB may produce data comparable to the more difficult and expensive interviewer-administered version. Disadvantages of self-administered forms are also discussed.