Table 1 A selection of well designed measures to elicit patient report of the outcomes of treatment

Satisfaction with/assessment of the outcomes of treatment

Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire (DTSQ). [5]

An 8 item measure of patient satisfaction with diabetes treatment.

Developed by qualitative work to ensure comprehensive and authentic issues were covered. Assessed psychometrically and analysed in relation to covariates.

DTSQc [6]

Revised version of the above.

Detects greater responsiveness to improvements than the original DTSQ.

Oxford Elbow Score (OES) [7]

A 12-item PRO developed to assess the outcomes of elbow surgery.

Shown to be valid, reliable and sensitive to change after rigorous testing.

Questionnaire on the perceptions of patients about shoulder surgery. [8]

A 12-item PRO for patients having shoulder operations.

A short, practical, reliable, valid outcome measure that is sensitive to clinically important changes.

Questionnaire on the perceptions of patients about total hip replacement. [9]

A 12-item PRO for patients having total hip replacement (THR).

As above.

Questionnaire on the perceptions of patients about total knee replacement. [10]

A 12-item questionnaire for patients having a total knee replacement (TKR).

As above.

Measures containing transition items/global ratings of change

The Evaluation Ranking Scale (ERS) [11]

The ERS asks patients to rank and then rate six dimensions or characteristics of the services they have received.

Compared with a global measure of satisfaction the ERS was more specific, more discriminating, and resulted in lower satisfaction scores [11].

Patient Judgements of Hospital Quality (PJHQ) [12]

Designed to assess the health change associated with hospital stay/treatment over 11 scales.

This measure was subject to extensive and rigorous devolvement and testing that included patient reported open-ended responses about the quality of hospital care, and interviews with hospital administrators, physicians and nurses [12].

Patient Global Impression of Change Scale (PGIC) [13]

Measures patient evaluations of their health change in relation to treatment.

Captures what patients consider to be important changes in pain ratings [14] and cancer specific quality of life scores [15, 16]. Also a potential correlate of clinical opinion [17]. Used in trials of chronic pain [17, 18] and recommended as a core outcome measure of global improvement [19].

The Functional Status Index (FSI) [20]

A patient specific measure of change in maximal physical, mental, and emotional function with a transition component that measures change from patient specific norms.

As part of the development it was compared with the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) [21] and performed well, showing sensitivity to change over time [22].

The Health Transition Index (HTI) [23]

Patient rated change in health between two time periods using a 5 point ordinal scale (1 = much better than a year ago; 2 = somewhat better than a year ago; 3 = about the same; 4 = somewhat worse than a year ago; and 5 = much worse than a year ago)

HTI was used as an external anchor to assess the responsiveness of the SF36 [23], the HAQ [24] and a disease specific health status measure AIMS2 [25] in psoriatic arthritis [26] and detected as much change as clinical examination [26].

Short Form 36 (SF36) [23]

The SF-36 is a health survey with 36 questions. It yields an 8-scale profile of functional health and well-being scores as well as psychometrically-based physical and mental health. The HTQs have five response categories from “much better” to “much worse”.

The HTQ was assessed among a large general practice sample and correlated well with change measured prospectively [27]. The discriminative properties of the HTQs were demonstrated in a similar large population study against prospective change [28]. This study was able to successfully distinguish groups whose health had improved compared to those whose health deteriorated.