IPA for Victorson: Measuring Quality of Life in Veterans with Deployment-Related PTSD

This project will result in the development of improved measures of health related quality of life (HRQOL) for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Because our work will be built on and linked to work of larger national HRQOL projects, the results will not only improve measurement for veterans with PTSD but will also allow for comparison of results across clinic settings and disease groups. We will develop and validate a short form of the measure that will enable using it with traditional self-administered techniques. In addition, algorithms will be created to facilitate the adaptation of the resultant measures into a computerized adapted testing (CAT) environment, which will streamline the use of the tool in clinical practice and reduce respondent burden. While the primary outcome measure used to test the efficacy of clinical interventions in PTSD is the reduction of symptoms, increasingly measures of health related quality of life (HRQOL) are also included. The most commonly used HRQOL measure employed in clinical studies of veterans with PTSD is the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). The SF-36 is a "generic" HRQOL instrument that does not contain specific domains/items reflecting quality of life issues experienced by veterans with deployment-related PTSD. The goal of this study is to design more sensitive measures of deployment-related PTSD HRQOL for veterans that do contain such items/domains. The short term objectives of this study are to: 1) Identify the most important HRQOL issues, concerns and subsequent domains/constructs (e.g. distress, pain, social role changes) that a HRQOL measure should assess in Veterans with deployment-related PTSD. 2) Develop new items pools and/or adapt item banks from existing NIH funded tools (e.g., PROMIS/Neuro QOL) that represent