Quality of Well-Being Scale – Self Administered (QWB-SA)

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The UCSD Health Services Research Center requires up-to-date copyrights from all users of the QWB-SA. Copyright agreements are valid for one year and can be found using the links below:

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One of the criticisms of the original, interview driven QWB is that it is more expensive and difficult to administer than competing measures, such as the SF-36. The original QWB is relatively long and complex because it has some branching and probe questions and requires a trained interviewer. We therefore developed a self-administered QWB; referred to as the Quality of Well-Being scale, Self-Administered (QWB-SA) that addresses some of these issues (Kaplan, Ganiats, and Sieber, 1996).

There are several strengths of the QWB-SA:

  • Includes assessment of symptoms in addition to various areas of functioning.
  • The expanded list of symptoms now includes additional mental health items.
  • To reduce recall bias, the QWB-SA assesses only the 3 days prior to completion of the questionnaire.
  • The scoring of the instrument utilizes population-derived preference weights.

Use of the QWB-SA is growing rapidly. The UCSD Health Services Research Center is conducting a strong and diverse research program toward establishing the psychometric properties of this new measure. Current studies are addressing the ability of the QWB-SA to detect changes in samples of migraineurs, cataract surgery patients, mental health populations, arthritis patients, as well as validating the sensitivity of this measure translated in Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, French-Canadian, and Dutch.

Contact Information:
For specific questions regarding the QWB-SA, contact:
qwb@ucsd.edu