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Reliability

Validity

Minimal Clinically Significant Difference

References

Instruments

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Health and Activities Limitation Index (HALex)

Name of Questionnaire

Description

Derived from items in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the HALex is a generic measure of health that incorporates information about perceived health and activity limitation into a single composite score. The developers note that the score can be combined with information about life expectancy to yield a measure of quality-adjusted life years (QALY) 1 .

Developer

Pennifer Erickson
George Torrance

Address

Pennifer Erickson, PhD,
Pennsylvania State University,
1316 Deerfield Drive,
State College, PA 16803

E-mail

pae6@psu.edu

Cost & Availability

Available at no cost from the National Center for Health Statistics. Conversion of HALex HRQL combined scores to QALYs is published 2 .

Administration

Interviewer. Self-administered version reportedly in development 1.

Time to Complete

Not published.

Number of Items

One item on health perception; six categories for activity limitation.

Categories/Domains (#)

Two

Name of Categories/Domains

Health perception and activity limitation.

Scaling of Items

Five response categories for health perception; six response categories for activity limitation.

Scoring

Responses for the two domains are inserted into a classification matrix with 30 possible combinations. Scores are assigned to each classification ranging from .10 (most dysfunctional living state) to 1.0 (healthiest state).

Reliability

Not reported.

Validity

Evidence for construct validity and incremental validity reported for the general population sampled by the NHIS 1 . Utilities obtained with the HALex for patients post-MI were similar to those obtained using other measures 3 . As expected, HALex utilities were lowest in cancer patients immediately after treatment, and improved over the 5-yr post-diagnosis period 4 .

Responsiveness

Not reported.

Research Use

Not reported.

Clinical Use

Not reported.

Language

English (US)

References

Erickson P. Evaluation of a population-based measure of quality of life: the Health and Activity Limitation Index (HALex). Qual Life Res 1998;7:101-114.
Erickson P, Wilson RW, Shannon I. Years of Healthy Life: Statistical Note Number 7 . Hyattsville , MD : National Center for Health Statistics, 1995.
Bradley CJ, Kroll J, Holmes-Rovner M. The Health and Activities Limitation Index in patients with acute myocardial infarction. J Clin Epidemiol 2000;53:555-562.
Ko CY, Maggard M, Livingston EH. Evaluating health utility in patients with melanoma, breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer: a nationwide, population-based assessment. J Surgical Res 2003;114:1-5.

Date of Information

November 2005