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Updated U.S. population standard for the Veterans RAND 12-item Health Survey (VR-12)

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this project was to develop an updated U.S. population standard for the Veterans RAND 12-item Health Survey (VR-12).

Methods

We used a well-defined and nationally representative sample of the U.S. population from 52,425 responses to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) collected between 2000 and 2002. We applied modified regression estimates to update the non-proprietary 1990 scoring algorithms. We applied the updated standard to the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) to compute the VR-12 physical (PCS(MEPS standard)) and mental (MCS(MEPS standard)) component summaries based on the MEPS. We compared these scores to PCS and MCS based on the 1990 U.S. population standard.

Results

Using the updated U.S. population standard, the average VR-12 PCS(MEPS standard) and MCS(MEPS standard) scores in the Medicare HOS were 39.82 (standard deviation [SD] = 12.2) and 50.08 (SD = 11.4), respectively. For the same Medicare HOS, the average PCS and MCS scores based on the 1990 standard were 1.40 points higher and 0.99 points lower in comparison to VR-12 PCS and MCS, respectively.

Conclusions

Changes in the U.S. population between 1990 and today make the old standard obsolete for the VR-12, so the updated standard developed here is widely available to serve as such a contemporary standard for future applications for health-related quality of life (HRQoL) assessments.

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Notes

  1. We applied the following formula: (GH1 − 0.84) * βgh1 + (PF02 − 1.64) * βpf02 + (PF04 − 2.59) * βpf04 + (BP2 + 1.27) * βbp2 + (VT2 − 5.83) * βvt2 + (MH3 − 6.01) * βmh3) + (MH4 + 2.77) * βmh4 + (SF2 − 0.50) * βsf2 + C.

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Acknowledgments

The research in this article was supported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) under contract numbers 500-00-0055 with the NCQA, Office of Quality and Performance (OQP) of the Department of Veterans Affairs, The Center for Health Quality, Outcomes and Economic Research (CHQOER), Department of Veterans Affairs, and Boston University School of Public Health.

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Correspondence to Alfredo J. Selim.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the authors, and no official endorsement by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, or Boston University is intended or should be inferred.

SF-36® and SF-12® are registered trademarks of the Medical Outcomes Trust.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 Confirmatory factor analysis of SF-12 items
Table 6 Modified regression estimation (MRE) coefficients (for the cases of no missing values) based on the Employee Health Care Value Survey (EHCVS) data and the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) data

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Selim, A.J., Rogers, W., Fleishman, J.A. et al. Updated U.S. population standard for the Veterans RAND 12-item Health Survey (VR-12). Qual Life Res 18, 43–52 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-008-9418-2

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