Rationale: Little research is available on the relationships between physical function components of commonly used health-related quality of life (QOL) survey instruments in pulmonary rehabilitation. The SF-36 and Ferrans & Powers Quality of Life Index (QOLI) are currently used in many North Carolina pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) facilities to periodically assess changes in psychosocial function during PR participation.
Objective: This investigation was designed to assess relationships between the SF-36 and QOLI physical function domains in men and women following both short- and long-term PR participation.
Methods: For this project, patients aged 20 to 93 years from 19 multidisciplinary PR programs were given either the SF-36 survey (4 programs), the QOLI survey (13 programs), or both (2 programs) following standardized instructions at PR entry and again following 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months of PR participation. Pearson correlations were used to compare the physical function components of the QOL instruments at each time interval.
Results: Correlations between the QOLI Health and Function component scores and the SF-36 Physical Summary and Role Function-Physical component scores are presented below:
Conclusions: Moderate to strong correlations between the physical function components of the 2 QOL surveys were observed in men and women at each time period. There appears to be good relationships between the SF-36 and QOLI physical function domains in patients of medically supervised PR programs with up to 2 years of PR participation. Further investigation is warranted into the psychometrics of the surveys used to determine the causality of the positive correlations observed here.