Influence of socio-demographic and health status variables on evaluation of health states in a Spanish population

As part of a European project In health status measurement, the aim of the present article was to test the feasibility of the Spanish version of the EuroQol © and to analyse the influence of socio-demographic and health status variables in the evaluation of health states in a Spanish population. The pilot study showed that while the translation of the EuroQol © into Spanish was satisfactory, the task of evaluation was considered to be too difficult to be done by using mailed questionnaires. Through a quota sampling method we recruited 600 individuals attending a centre of primary care according to age, sex, occupational class and patient/non-patient status. We administered the EuroQol instrument - a descriptive system with 5 dimensions each with 3 levels and a visual analogue scale (thermometer) on which individuals rate their own health state ranging from 0 to 100. Values for a subset of 16 health states out of 243 possible combinations were obtained on a visual analogue scale. Self-rated health state was predicted by age, self-described health state and experience of illness (r 2 =0.51). Despite the low prediction rate, the differences in the values assigned to the 16 health states appeared to be as a result of the difficulty in the task evaluation and of age. The small differences found suggest that socio-demographic and health status characteristics do not influence health states ratings among individuals attending a primary care centre. Further research is currently under way to test the reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the EuroQol © .