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National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Health-Related Quality of Life
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CDC uses a set of questions called the "Healthy Days Measures." These questions include the following:
- Excellent
- Very good
- Good
- Fair or
- Poor
Health-Related Quality of Life Measures (English)
Health-Related Quality of Life Measures (Spanish)
This section includes the four core questions above, and ten additional questions about health-related quality of life. These questions ask about recent pain, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, vitality, and the cause, duration, and severity of a current activity limitation an individual may have in his or her life.
Unhealthy days are an estimate of the overall number of days during the previous 30 days when the respondent felt that either his or her physical or mental health was not good. To obtain this estimate, responses to questions 2 and 3 are combined to calculate a summary index of overall unhealthy days, with a logical maximum of 30 unhealthy days. For example, a person who reports four physically unhealthy days and two mentally unhealthy days is assigned a value of six unhealthy days, and someone who reports 30 physically unhealthy days and 30 mentally unhealthy days is assigned the maximum of 30 unhealthy days.
Healthy days are the positive complementary form of unhealthy days. Healthy days estimates the number of recent days when a person's physical and mental health was good (or better) and is calculated by subtracting the number of unhealthy days from 30 days.
Origins and Use of CDC HRQOL Measures and DataSince 1993, the four core Healthy Days measures have been part of the
state based BRFSS's full sample. Also starting in 2000, the Healthy Days
Measures were added to the examination component of the National Health
and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The demonstrated value of these
measures and the continuous accumulation of public domain data have
resulted in support from the CDC Disability, Women's Health, and Arthritis
Programs. The HRQOL measures and data have also been used for research or
program planning by CDC's Cardiovascular Health and HIV/AIDS Programs as
well as by the Public Health Foundation, the Foundation for
Accountability, and several other government and academic programs. In recent years, several organizations have found these Healthy Days
measures useful at the national level for (1) identifying health
disparities, (2) tracking population trends, and (3) building broad
coalitions around a measure of population health compatible with the World
Health Organization's definition of health.
One of the greatest anticipated uses of the BRFSS Healthy Days measures and data is at the state and local levels for tracking overall progress on achieving the two major goals of Healthy People 2010:
SAS, SPSS & SUDAAN syntaxSAS, SPSS, and SUDAAN syntax to correctly
recode and/or create the Healthy Days Measures. For additional questions
about the syntax, please send the Health-Related Quality of Life
Assessment staff a message please contact us. Measurement PropertiesMeasurement Properties |
Privacy Policy | Accessibility This page last reviewed December 01, 2005 United
States Department of Health and Human Services |