THE EFFECT OF MODE OF ADMINISTRATION ON MEDICAL OUTCOMES STUDY HEALTHRATINGS AND EUROQOL SCORES IN AIDS

Brief measures of health-related quality of life are being used with i ncreased frequency in AIDS clinical trials. Self-administration of que stionnaires can reduce costs in this setting because they require litt le time. However, the equivalence between self- and interview-administ ered responses in clinical trials is not known. We evaluated patient a nd proxy responses to the Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MO S-HIV) and the EuroQol, We randomized 68 patients with advanced HIV di sease on (1) mode of administration (self vs. interview); (2) type of interview (face-to-face vs. telephone); (3) questionnaire order (MOS-f irst vs, EuroQol-first); and (4) 2- vs. 3-item response categories for physical limitations. There were few differences in scores between se lf and interview administration and type of interview, Proxy responden ts viewed patients as more impaired than did patients themselves on su bjective aspects of health including mental health (63.8 vs. 75.7, p < 0.001), health distress (67.3 vs. 77.1, p = 0.007), pain (64.4 vs. 70 .0, p = 0.04), and vitality (48.4 vs. 55.5, p = 0.04). Results concern ing questionnaire order and number of response categories were not con clusive. Our results suggest that for patients with advanced HIV disea se, data from the MOS-HIV and the EuroQol collected using different mo des may be pooled, but that proxy responses should be calibrated.