Health outcomes

Question 1

Types of health outcome?

Answer 1

record based e.g. mortality and disease incidence

Biological and clinical

Clinician and patient reported e.g QoL

Question 2

Validity

Answer 2

They must measure accurately what they report to measure

Include all relevant concepts

Be valid for target populations

Question 3

Reliability

Answer 3

Test-retest; would give same sample repeatedly

Inter-rater: different assessors using the same outcome measure give the same result

Question 4

Responsiveness

Answer 4

Must detect real changes in outcomes when they occur

Question 5

What are the issues in analysis?

Answer 5

data properties- ordinal, categorical?
What are we testing
Typically interested in: effect size (magnitude of change in outcome) and statistical tests of different P values

Question 6

Measuring constructs in health?

Answer 6

Symptoms, functioning and QoL

Question 7

What are patient reported outcomes?

Answer 7

quality from the patients perspective e.g questionnaire

Question 8

What are health outcomes used for?

Answer 8

identify effective and non effective treatments
Identify national and international variations- promote equality
Monitor performance