HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY-OF-LIFE OF PSYCHIATRIC AND OTHER PATIENTS IN ICELAND - PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE IQL

Psychiatric patients in a day-center and alcoholics experienced a lowe r health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in most respects, with the ex ception of pain and physical health, than did physically disabled pers ons, who in turn rated their quality of life to be considerably below that for those visiting general practitioners. These results are based on a study using a 30-item questionnaire IQL (Icelandic Quality of Li fe) constructed by selecting the best items from seven other questionn aires using hierarchical cluster analysis for separating 11 aspects of quality of life, and a detailed quantitative and qualitative item ana lysis. The IQL has acceptable reliability and validity; however, to di stinguish between the disabled and the alcoholic's quality of life, pr ofiles on the basis of the above-mentioned aspects should be used rath er than one summary score. An exploratory principal component analysis indicated that four factors explained 68% of the Variance found in th e health-related quality of life of participants in the study. One of these factors explains nearly half of the observed variance. Items loa ding high on that factor are all related to mental health. The other f actors include items on physical health and specific items on sleep an d financial status.