Assessment of health-related quality of life in acute in-patient settings:Use of the bases instrument in children undergoing bone marrow transplantation

The Behavioral, Affective and Somatic Experiences Scale (BASES) represents a set of tools for assessing aspects of health-related quality of life (HRQ L) in patients undergoing active, intensive therapy. Separate versions have been developed for parent, nurse and patient reports. The scales were cons tructed to be sensitive to change and appropriate for repeated measures in longitudinal designs. We report preliminary results with these measures fro m a sample of 105 children undergoing bone marrow transplantation (BMT), Ad equate reliability of the instruments is documented through measures of bot h internal consistency and cross-informant consistency. Several analyses pr ovide evidence of the clinical validity of the measures. Repeated-measures ANOVAs indicated reliable patterns of change over time, with trajectories t hat conformed to a priori predictions. Discriminative validity was demonstr ated through detection of significant differences in the predicted directio n between patients undergoing allogeneic and autologous BMT, Additional evi dence for validity comes from the very similar symptom trajectories in pare nt, nurse and patient reports, Differences between the BASES and other meas ures of HRQL ave identified and alternative uses of the instruments are dis cussed. Int. J. Cancer Suppl, 12:18-24, 1999. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.