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Journal of Health Psychology
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Sensitivity to Change Following Liver Transplantation

A Comparison of Three Instruments that Measure Quality of Life

Ronan E. O'carroll

School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, UK

Jill A. Cossar

Maggie C. Couston

Peter C. Hayes

Scottish Liver Transplant Unit, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, UK

There is an increasing focus on the importance of quality-of-life (QOL) factors in evaluating the efficacy of medical and surgical interventions. There are a wide number of instruments currently available, and the aim of the present study was to evaluate the relative sensitivity to change of three widely used QOL measures, the WHOQOL-100, the SF-36 and the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist, focusing on psychological and physical components of life quality. Fifty patients were assessed pre- and 3 months post-liver transplantation. In addition, 21 patients with liver disease but who were not transplanted were assessed twice, separated by a 3-month interval, in order to serve as a comparison group. All QOL measures showed significant improvement following liver transplantation, whereas the control group showed no significant within-subject change on any measure. We employed the Standardised Response Mean (SRM) effect size as our index of clinically meaningful change in QOL measures. Large SRM effect sizes were obtained following liver transplantation for WHOQOL-100 and SF-36 summary measures, and for the Rotterdam physical subscale. In contrast, the traditional SF-36 scale scores and Rotterdam psychological subscale exhibited only moderate sensitivity to change.

Key Words: effect size • SF-36 • SRM • standardized response mean • WHOQOL

Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 69-74 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/135910530000500111
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