Measuring health status using the Health Utilities Index: Agreement between raters and between modalities of administration

The aim of this study was to evaluate interrater and intermodality agreemen t in assessing health status using the Health Utilities Index. A random sam ple from a Dutch cohort of 14-year-old Very Low Birth Weight children and t heir parents were invited to participate in a face-to-face (rt = 150) or te lephone (n = 150) interview. All 300 participants were also sent a question naire by mail. Response rate was 68%. Interrater and intermodality agreemen t were high for the physical HUI3 attributes and poor for the psychological attributes. Children and parents reported more dysfunction in the psycholo gical attributes when interviewed than when completing the mailed questionn aire. High agreement on the physical attributes may have resulted from the fact that hardly any dysfunction was reported in these attributes, and poor agreement in the psychological attributes may have been,a result of the fa ct that in these attributes much more dysfunction was reported. In measurin g children's health status using the HUI3, the results and their interpreta tion vary with the source of information and the modality of administration . For maximum comparability between studies, written self-report questionna ires seem the preferred option. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights r eserved.