Research team

Expertise

My key research areas include health-related quality of life (HRQoL), health status measurement & evaluation and patient preference. I have been involved in various research projects as a main investigator and have conducted empirical studies to quantify HRQoL, investigate the subjective constructions of HRQoL, and explore patients’ preferences to medications. As a EuroQol member, I am with a particular interest in EQ-5D including both its methodological development and pragmatic applications.

Exploring subjective constructions of quality of life as defined by EQ-HWB in patients, carers and the healthy general publics: a Q-methodological study. 01/03/2023 - 31/12/2024

Abstract

The development process of EQ-HWB took careful consideration of the views of patients, service users and their carers, with regard to how health and social care services and/or caring roles can impact their quality of life (QoL). As a result, theoretically, EQ-HWB has the potential to be used in various populations and thus, is suitable for outcome measurement of interventions across health and social care. Apart from collecting statistical psychometric properties to know whether EQ-HWB can function well in not only patients but also service users and carers, it is equivalently important, if not more, to know how EQ-HWB can be used across different groups of populations. Evidence from a more conceptual point of view is needed to show why EQ-HWB can have a variety of targeting audiences and how such variety can affect the measurement and evaluation of QoL. The overall aim of this study is to explore similarities and differences in perceptions of QoL, as defined by EQ-HWB, among different groups of populations, including patients, carers and the healthy general publics. We propose to use Q-methodology to investigate the subjective constructions of QoL across the groups. We would like to examine whether and to what extent the role/position of an individual can influence how the items of EQ-HWB are interpreted and evaluated.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Constructs of HRQoL and mental well-being. 01/03/2023 - 30/06/2023

Abstract

A substantial number of studies estimated mapping functions between a preference-based measure, such as EQ-5D, and other non-preference-based measures, but few have looked into the concepts being measured by the present measures to check the legitimacy of mapping. Concepts such as health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and mental well-being are vaguely defined in health outcomes research and there is no agreement on their definitions and measurement. A crude analysis of the PubMed citations indicates that EQ-5D is associated with terms such as health status (29%), health-related quality of life (85%), quality of life (81%), well-being (6%), patient-reported outcome (9%), and/or satisfaction (10%), but what does EQ-5D measure? These concepts are not well clarified. In this study, we aim to use a series of statistical methods to explore the constructs of HRQoL and mental well-being, as defined by EQ-5D and GHQ-12, respectively. Specifically, we aim to understand to what extent the items of EQ-5D and GHQ-12 associate/overlap with each other. The second aim is to provide empirical evidence to distinguish the constructs of concepts including health, quality of life, mental well-being and satisfaction, which are all vaguely defined and often used interchangeably. We will use the data collected in the 'Great Corona Study' (GCS) in Belgium. The GCS study included EQ-5D-5L, GHQ-12, overall satisfaction score, the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and the 6-item Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-6). We will perform a set of statistical analyses, including multidimensional scaling and exploratory factor analysis to attain the research aims.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project